SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Danny Boyle, 2008

1 - DANCING AND DENIAL:

Danny Boyle says that he didn’t see the dance sequence in "Slumdog Millionaire" as a homage to Bollywood. He says it is because you can’t go to India and not dance [1], which, although obviously spoken out of some appreciation joy derived from his time there, can’t help but strike a condescending chord. It also echoes Danny Boyle denying that his "23 Days Later" is a zombie film. Is it possible that the lightness of touch Boyle has with dark subject matter - which can be an asset - comes from a kind of benign self-denial of the roots of some choices? Is he really oblivious to genre convention? "23 Days Later" may be as he says "a thing in itself" [1], but it still has antecedents and works within a given genre: even if Boyle does not want it associated with Romero’s flesh-eaters, the violent plague of "23 Days Later" is preceded by Romero’s "The Crazies", at least.

Whatever, and it really shouldn’t work, but there was a cry of joy from the cinema audience with whom I saw "Slumdog" when the dance routine started. At the time, I myself was a sucker for it. Breaking out the Bollywood moves really should have been a terrible lurch to applauding oneself - but somehow Boyle pulls it off, perhaps because by the end of the film it has completely frothed up and spilt over and pretty much anything goes. It also provides a strong clue as to the karaoke-style emotional triggers and playing-to-the-crowd intentions of this Oscar winner. I am willing to bet that there is a catalog of Bollywood films to which fans could find similarities and references. "Slumdog" really is quite a remarkably successful pot pouri, the ingredients of which Boyle’s seems cheerfully in denial about, where any blandness of concept is resolved with a little sprinkling of Indian spices. He’s watched Bollywood and Zombie films, but his films aren’t them. It is a thing in itself. It is, actually, a thing of many other things.

Boyle comes across as highly amiable and full of good intentions, and I am sure that is shocked by the accusations of racism inherent in the film. What he surely sees as his tribute to India wears all the signifiers of post-colonial thinking, the kind where, hilariously, white people feel no qualms about congratulating the nearest Asian on "Slumdog" (See Accidental Blogger’s article, quotes and comments, plus funny video, for a fine description of why "Slumdog Millionaire" can be filed for accusations of colonialist thinking - clink that link). So is Boyle’s portrayal of the slums a homage to slumdog resilience or a cinematic prettifying, where the emphasis on "Destiny" patronises as the elements of Indian culture is exoticised for a Western audience? An audience that is well familiar with the feel-good romantic fantasies, and especially those so profoundly tied to monetary success. But it is surely not so much the utilisation of a culture or underclass for pop-entertainment that ought to offend as much as the inanity of the script and conceit themselves, the latter derived from Indian author Vikas Swarap’s source novel. That "Slumdog" wins a Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay is surely a insult to the craft, being that is it based upon the most hackneyed dialogue and beliefs.

Entertainment is its only agenda and, like its protagonist, it gleefully ploughs through its turmoil somewhat obliviously. It champions "destiny" over distress and experience over intelligence and truly has no statement worth considering. Boyle sees the romantic achievement as the true happy ending of the film, although he states that Americans specifically ask him: "He got the money? He did get the money, yeah?!" Again, he seems blissfully unaware of the full ramifications of the concept.

2- FEEL GOOD; FEEL BAD; FEEL GOOD

Sure, I have been telling many people that "Slumdog Millionaire" is good, by which I mean it is worth watching and that they will probably enjoy it as I did, perhaps more so. I am reluctant to dismiss it simply because it is so currently popular, and also to avoid being dishonest because I did enjoy it on first viewing. I always set out to enjoy the film before me and I was kept aloft for the duration. As a feel-good parable with enough trauma to boost up the size of the gleeful all-win finale (and would that ever be a spoiler or unexpected?), it works tremendously well. It’s a fairy-tale where the happy ending is always in mind, is never in doubt. Love will champion all. And the millions probably won’t do much harm either. The British promotional posters are thoroughly misleading (it seems to be a marriage rom-com, judging by the confetti and embrace), or at least won’t prepare most for the litany of torture and corruption that is the scaffolding of the narrative… although little actual deprivation is depicted. "The FEEL GOOD movie of the DECADE" say the posters in type almost bigger than the title of the film itself. But Boyle does it all with such gusto and joy, or rather films the dark elements with hardly a hint of despair, that although you are suitably horrified, you do not come away feeling scarred. It is remarkable sleight-of-hand.

The young cast are effortlessly charming, and Dev Patel gives a career-making performance of vulnerability, charm and humour that grounds all the pyrotechnics going on around him. As Jamal he is, as Sight and Sound notes, as impervious to the cruelty around him as "Oliver Twist" [2], and Dev is photogenic, winning and cautious in his performance, wafer thin as his character is, as unlikely perfect as his accent becomes. Jamal's brother Salim looks as if he has wandered in from "City of God", and Freida Pinto as Latika is gorgeous, even though she is nothing more than a token prize. It is often funny and always engaging. And it must be said that the soundtrack is great too. All this is the good.

The dashes of "Salaam Bombay!" and alternative Asian cinema go some way to salvage Boyle’s film from the curse of the shallow feel-good flick, and help to forgive many clichés. It is a parable, so that the truth of the film is a matter of archetypes rather than plausibility. The litany of abuses suffered by the main trio are there to bolster the fairy-tale ending, but it is not particularly earned, neither by the characters or the narrative contrivance. The emotional tempo of a Danny Boyle film is often that of a commercial, at the service of the cool/hip/sad/pretty/etc moment rather than a coherent thread. One moment a humorous slum celebration, next slim neo-realism, next a rascally picaresque romp, next a heroic rescue mission, the next a gangster flick, next a gameshow, next a music video. Et cetera. There are always enough tricks to please the eye, although Boyle never quite pulls off an evocative simplicity in the manner of "The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros", where the kaleidoscope of slum colours is derived organically from the natural array of litter.

Just as I am reticent about accusing "Slumdog" of conscious racism, I am reluctant to echo accusations of "poverty porn", despite the alliterative appeal. There are other genuine classics that exploit poverty to empathic ends, such as the sympathetic and sentimental "Umbert D.", or the scathing expose of "Gummo". It is true that "Slumdog" has no insights or genuine, deeply felt compassion, which means its manipulation of poverty is of the cheaper kind; but it is surely a mistake to look to it for any more profundity than, say, the crime musical "Oliver!" So not quite "poverty porn", but it does closes with a montage of poverty days featuring all smiles and no scarring. No matter what happens, you’ll turn out okay at the end.... just believe.

Far more problematic is this film’s happy lobotomised view of fate: it is that the poverty and hardships cause no credible trauma in the characters. That’s Destiny! Latika is raped by Salim; the brothers see their mother murdered (luckily, Jamal has some kind of religious vision which immediately tops this loss); they are beaten by cops; they live in dump sites; there is the slight hint of starvation; their friends are abused… But when Jamal meets an old friend in the street, blinded deliberately to increase his begging power, the old friend merely accepts his lot like a good martyr and absolves Jamal of any guilt or responsibility by telling him that the only difference between them is that Jamal is the one that escaped such a fate. Destiny! Boyle presents a somewhat garbled and condescensing vision of the role of "Destiny" in the film, and seems to present going on a gameshow as taking charge of fate ... which, no matter how he tries to assign this to an Indian context, seems a particularly Westernised vision of taking your life into your own hands.

There is precious little bitterness, outrage or acumen in this slumdog’s world. And the romantic angle is just the substanceless pap that holds up vacuous girl-and-boy narratives of bad writing and fragrance adverts the world over. If we are to take the film’s colourful aesthetic and short attention span as life filtered through Jamal’s view, then it’s like that of a passive kitten being entertained by shiny colourful sweet wrappers, even as it is being kicked around.


3 - WORTH A MILLION, THEN?

Upon leaving the cinema, my friend declared that he loved it whilst suspecting that it actually wasn’t very good. Indeed, there are surely plenty more films more worthy of the Golden Globes, Oscars, and whatever else they hand it, but perhaps fewer that are unashamedly as popularist and enjoyable. Similarly, I enjoyed "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army" whilst recognising its serious weaknesses that surely makes it Del Toro’s lesser work (I wouldn't begrudge technical awards). Or, to look at something a little more comparable, "Walk The Line" was thoroughly amenable but also utterly pedestrian and predictable: it would be nice to expect more from award-winners. "Slumdog Millionaire" has plenty of dazzle, but I suspect is more pretty packaging with a little kernel of grit that rattles in an otherwise hollow parcel.

I believe my conflicted and ambivalent response to the film is clear. But if we really are talking Best Film and Best Director ever... In 2008, "Gomorrah" was far bolder and more enlightening in its exposition of slum and criminal lifestyle; "Let The Right One In" was far more surprising and exemplary in its juggling of restraint and grandstanding; similarly, "The Dark Knight" transcended its genre; and "The Wrestler" was a far better piece of classic formula. I would also argue that all those films had superior and more subtle editing ("Slumdog" won for that). But, again, "Slumdog Millionaire" is a remarkably popular film, and one cannot underestimate the draw of those twin dreams of wealth and love, with the preceding story of hardship surmounted. This time they are in a Bollywood-style package which may be fresh and surprising to Western Audience unfamiliar with Indian cinema of any hue. That Boyle makes anything coherent and successful out of such a grab-bag of moods and references is surely noteworthy in itself. It is ultimately more "Oliver!" than Satyajit Ray. It’s entertaining-good, but not award-good. Award winners should surely be of some originality, should epitomise some aspect of the art form, even when playing to the crowd, and should hold up under scrutiny. Definitely not award-good.

*
[1] "Mumbai Rising", Alkarim Jivani, Sight and Sound, vol. 9, issue 2, February 2009, pg's 40-41
[2] "Slumdog Millionaire" review, Geoffrey Macnab, Sight and Sound, vol. 9, issue 2, February 2009, pg's 75-6

THE WRESTLER

Darren Aronofsky - 2009, USA - France

A fine, winning film, Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" treats it’s generic narrative with respect, as if playing it old school, conventional but not patronising, and allows performance and execution to elevate the material (like, say, "Million Dollar Baby" but unlike "Slumdog Millionaire"). And yes, Rourke’s performance as Randy the Ram the one-time wrestling sensation is compelling, bold and truthful, living and breathing. There is some irony that the performance seems be considered an instant classic and one for the ages, as it's a tale of a burnt-out star, trying for a comeback. Truth is, Rourke may well have already stolen the show in "Sin City", and this is just moreso. The film is lo-fi, mature, sentimental, stripped down and moving. The choice of Bruce Springsteen for the theme song is totally appropriate, for the film plays like him at his acoustic best.

The narrative and Robert D. Siegal's script are equal parts slapped down obvious and underplayed detail. The allusions to Christ martyrdom come with verbalised signposts, and Randy’s love interest is a stripper (Merisa Tomei), so we thoroughly get the whole body as abused commodity and meat market angles. But Randy-Rourke’s daily routine, juggling the need for cash with an increasing battle with age and loneliness, is comprehensive and totally convincing. The incidental details and moments raise what is otherwise standard: when Randy starts to displace some of his wrestling showmanship into killing time working on a deli counter, it’s funny and thoroughly real; when Randy wakes up after a wild night on the town in some one-night-stand's bedroom covered in firemen posters, it's the kind of story you laugh about with friends years later. The backstage wrestling camaraderie carries an unglamorous sense of authenticity as screenplay and direction refuses to condescend to the amateur wrestling circuit or play it up as a freakshow. Aronofsky’s methodology is simple: the long takes that follow Randy around are a treat; alternately he gets in close and quick for the fights, which seem full of pain and humiliation, regardless of how staged they are.

That the story hinges on a heart attack and one last bout, and that there is an estranged daughter to try and reconnect with surprises nobody - the latter being the weakest subplot where Evan Rachel Wood delivers some TV acting that only looks artificial compared to what's around her. Nevertheless, even her dance with dad in a dancehall arguably works because (a) the fact that Randy can lead hints at another side of him rather than triteness, such is our investment in the character, and (b) the dancehall is deserted and decrepit, continuing the film’s milieu of crumbling surroundings, of deserted signing sessions, of soulless workplaces, of people and places long past their prime and sell-by date. The adults are still living life and finding thrills through the songs of their youth, but also find themselves still making old mistakes. Masochism seems to be everywhere and particularly linked to machismo. No potential romance will resolve all here, because experience and life has left them jaded and no longer able to take new chances. Even so, the unforced moments of humour go some way to balancing out the despair and brutality. It is this ambience that makes "The Wrestler" feel like an adult’s film, full of past glories, wry amusement, fading fame and opportunities. Maybe she gets out, but in the end Randy decides or discovers that all he has left is a choice of how to walk offstage. But more than this, the bleakness is never allowed to dominate, for this is a film of generous humanity that likes people and wants to offer them one last moment of glory.

CREEPSHOW

George A. Romero, 1982, USA

-1-
"Creepshow" has a prologue that is a candidate for the best horror film opening ever. Here’s why I love it: there’s thunder crashing and lightning flashing, and the disciplinarian father is yelling at his son for having a horror comic. What an asshole. That’s Tom Atkins as the asshole and that’s Joe King - horror superstar Stephen’s son - being disciplined. The rhythm of this scene is sublime: the dad chastises and dispenses disgust in the middle ground, the mother agonises in the background, the horror fan in the foreground… the horror fan yells back! "No! It wasn’t like that!" ThunderBOOMCRACK! That’s right, call daddy on his dirty mags. SLAP! Boom! …subside… the storm quietens a little, the kid’s beaten and dad’s the power. And an asshole. He goes outside and throws the comic in the garbage. Some lost chords played by "The Phantom of the Opera" start to play... The comic is called "Creepshow." There’s demonic cackling on the wind. "That’s why God made fathers, babe. That‘s why God made fathers." There are few other film scenes whose cadence has been engraved so deeply in my memory.

Okay, so now we are upstairs and the kid is sitting up in bed, horror posters on the wall, moping. The storm is kicking up again. "I hope you rot in hell!" The curse gargles in his throat and seemingly summons an unearthly sympathiser. And now the music truly kicks in. You are listening to the apex of horror themes now: the piano chords start chiming along with the heavier pounding. There’s a corpse at the window, decayed, almost regal, maybe even melancholy. It’s a real corpse, by the way. Our little fan grins. Our little fan is pounding one fist into his other palm like he knows. He knows vengeance is his. He knows the monsters are on his side. He knows something horrible is gonna happen. Our Creep is cackling, floating into the sky on a wave of animation and beckoning us in.

In this sequence, almost the entire pledge of the horror genre is embodied. You are a fan, it says. And if you are a fan of horror, chances are you harbour a grudge or too, just like fans of action-vengeance films; and maybe you once truly believed in monsters… under the bed, in the closet, in the woods, in the school basement, wherever… and the almost-secret is as much as they scared you, you wanted to be them too. In some not-so-vague unleashed Id-like way, monsters are payback. Yes, says the creep at your window, that’s right. I’m on your side really. Come with me and I’ll show you… The expectation, the sheer promise of this opening is transcendent, thrilling, mouth-watering.

Also note that the openings of all Romero's films are equally as good, and the beginnings of both "Night of the Living Dead" and "Creepshow" both share a dark humour and nail a horror fan's expectations in particular. But there is a gleeful relish in the latter that gives that little extra shiver.

-2-

That the rest of George Romero’s "Creepshow" more-or-less lives up to this promise is surely remarkable. It is probably true that it is a fun romp at the expense of the evident intelligence of Romero’s earlier films [1], and that the stories are derivative [2] - but it is more the comedy and the stories are also stock types.

When I first saw "Creepshow"… the first four or five times I saw "Creepshow", it scared the hell out of me. I am thinking I must have seen it first when I was maybe fourteen, and I must have rented it out from an obviously unscrupulous local video store, as I was a teenager. A local newsagent doubling as a rental store, in fact, with one corner crammed full of video cases (later, I worked there). A quick search was going to give you a great, ugly, lurid enticing cover. "Creepshow" also had great promotional covers. One with a skeleton, evidently a relative of The Creep (or, as Tom Savini dubbed him, ‘Raoul’) manning the ticket booth of a cinema-slash-crypt. The other being a comic book cover with the horror kid grinningly reading his forbidden comic in bed, The Creep at the window (this time, bafflingly, apparently missing an eye). Now, as every fan knows, there are a lot of great sleazy horror covers fronting inferior films, but this isn’t one of those. It’s a great party movie too, because it’s funny and scary. I remember watching it in a group several times and just waiting for them to jump out of their skins when the hand leaps out of the grave, and when the crate monster does his thing, or chuckling at "I got my caaake," or Hal Holbrook - in a miniature master class in how to cull a laugh from thin air - trying to stifle laughter from his deplorable wife. It’s a very friendly horror film.

The comic book aesthetic is also great fun: screaming people suddenly backgrounded with lightning-shock-horror; and "meanwhiles…" and "later…" indicated with pages and frames flipping. There’s never a subtitle blaring "AARRGGHH!", but it comes close. These comic book effects are used sensibly, for segues, flashbacks and denouements. The stories are comeuppance morality tales. You know who’ll get theirs. Except for Jordy Varrell. Jordy Varrell is clearly tragedy. Stephen King’s performance is broad and gung-ho, following instructions from Romero to play it like Wile E. Coyote; but I swear when he tones it done a hair, stepping out onto the porch to see his yard and the surrounding land covered in unnatural green-glowing vegetation, I swear King manages pathos. Nunkhead Varrell is just smart enough to know he’s doomed, and therein is the tragedy. It may be the lesser of the tales, but it’s unforgettable too. "How else are you gonna do it?" Romero has said many times in defence of the hamminess of King’s performance.

But the acting really, really elevates "Creepshow" into something special. All round, a great selection of actors take it seriously… tongue-in-cheek, but seriously… bringing the archetypal characters to life. Ed Harris’ (!) funky dance. Aunt Bedelia/Viveca Lindfors stepping out of her craziness at the gateway to the graveyard to show the misery on her face. Ted Dansen’s (!!) easy manner and natural charm enabling an instant bond with our unfortunate adulterer. Leslie Nielson (!!!) having a ball as a bad guy, setting up an elaborate, diabolical double-murder. Hal Holbrook truly remarkable with the repressed fury and the humour he pulls just from the modicum of looks… Adrienne Barbeau totally despicable, broad, and yet possessed of glimmers of credibility too. E.G. Marshall gleefully hateful and swearful. Rarely does a horror film hoard a variety of great and differing performances, treating the goofy enterprise with respect.

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And then there is the soundtrack. John Harrison’s soundtrack is just about the quintessential horror score. The "Phantom of the Opera" piano refrain, the spiralling piano whirls, the chattering ghostly choir. Then, on "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Varrell", goofy all-over-the-show music that seems to be scoring a cartoon somewhere else. With "Something to Tide You Over", suddenly we get music that wouldn’t be out-of-place in any Seventies thriller. The buzzes and atonal throbs of "They’re Creeping Up On You" compliment perfectly the white emptiness of the apartment. Even now, when those first piano chords strike up, it’s like the whole relish of horror being played. The Creep cackles and the spectral choir virtually go "Wheee!" with macabre bliss.

The execution of the whole enterprise transcends the genre storylines and even though it will never be considered the classic that "Night of the Living Dead" is, in it’s own way it is just as successful. It is not only a wonderful homage to EC Comics, but a great tribute to the dark joys of horror as a genre too. It would have been great if, as Romero has hinted he wanted, he had made a series of Creepshow anthologies… imagine that: a genre where he not only gave us the "living dead" films, but a handful of fun comic-book horror homages too. I am, of course, dismissing out of hand the "Creepshow" sequels that we actually have. They are merely stock horror that show up how classy the original actually is.

As a footnote, the crate monster evidently terrified me enough to give me nightmares. In the nightmare, it chased me out of buildings, through streets... and I couldn't get rid of it. No matter how much I hid and dodged, it always found me out and I would have to flee again. Finally, I ran to trick it into following me in front of a steamroller... the steamroller struck it, rolled over it from the feet up. All the time its white furry, apish face and mouth full of dagger-like teeth stared at me. And it spoke to me to tell me that it would still come. That wherever I went, it would find me. The steamroller notwithstanding, it seems. This threat of neverending chase and horror made me wake...

[1] - Peter Nicholls, "Fantastic Cinema", (Ebury Press, London, 1984), pg. 103

[2] - Aurum Film Encyclopedia of Horror, (ed. Phil Hardy, Aurum, London, 19930 pg. 375

FUNHOUSE

So the end result appears to be that Tobe Hooper’s best are his debut, the seminal "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and his adaptation of Stephen King's "Salem’s Lot", which remains a benchmark in TV horror. Hooper could do scary, in different ways. Even "Poltergeist" is a consummate example of family-friendly and toothless horror… with some scary. "Funhouse", another early Hooper horror, is ultimately disappointing. Apparently beset with production problems and interference that left subplots going nowhere, it’s a routine tale of "teens" not doing as they are told and uncovering terrible monsters at the local fair. It’s long on build-up, hobbled by pedestrian dialogue, characters and plotting and lacks for inventive killings. What it does have is a wonderful evocation of the carnival in all its detail and tackiness, a wonderful midway crane-shot, an unforgettable monster (some debate as to whether Rick Baker’s design is good or not: I say it’s scary, repellent and truly nightmarish), some lukewarm to above-average acting, and excellent set design. The funhouse itself is packed with garish lighting and mechanical monsters, seemingly bigger on the inside than the outside, full of genuine carnie adornments. Ultimately, it’s a routine slasher dressed up really nicely, and so it is more than acceptable when the milieu is so winning.

The most interesting aspect is that when we start off in the family home, our female protagonist Amy (Elizabeth Berridge) is getting ready to go out on a date, it quickly emerges that her prankster younger brother Joey (Shawn Carson) has turned as much of the place as he can into a funhouse of his own. Dummies, masks, cheap shocks… all present and correct, and damned if he isn’t engaging from the start in a thoroughly cheeky homage/rip-off of "Halloween" and "Psycho". In their respective funhouses, both attackers indulge in displays of violence from sexual immaturity: Joey attacks his sister in the shower with a decidedly limp fake knife, wearing a mask that makes him look like a demented old man; our hideous monster Gunther’s (!) premature ejaculation and un-fulfilment drives him to murder girl scouts and fortune tellers. Gunther and Joey both have excellent reveals when their masks are torn off to reveal… greater horrors than the masks traded in. In another "Halloween"-style gag, we see Gunther ( Wayne Doba) help run the funhouse wearing a Frankenstein’s monster’s mask long before the truth about his deformity is revealed (the patrons are deliciously clueless). But at base what "Funhouse" has is the kind of two-dollar sexual motivation and undertones of most post-"Friday the 13th" killer flicks, and exactly the kind that "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" didn’t trade in. On the one hand, sexual immaturity drive the confused to horrible crimes and pranks of passion, and on the other, it’s only the virgin seemingly rewarded with survival.

It is the carnie father and son that represent the family sticking together and surviving against the odds, despite also evidently being the foreign threat to small-town America. The father (Kevin Conway, adding much needed class) is both repulsed and loving to his hideously deformed son, given to bouts of cruelty but also not ready to let him be lynched like his mother or displayed as a sideshow freak like his brother. In comparison, the respectable middle-class suburban family are cold fish indeed, peddling in quick disdain, superficial concern and seemingly disinterest in one another. We can at least allow credentials of tragedy to the horrific monster and dad team, especially as mime artist Wayne Doba gives his best Karloff’s monster rendition to inscribe the Gunther with all kinds of pathos. There’s not much to care about in the double-dating couples who decide to stay overnight in the funhouse, just for chuckles and foreplay. Despite a nice realistic moment where an initial altercation between Amy and her slightly disreputable date sets the night off on the wrong foot, there is little of interest to the couples themselves.

Once these nondescript couples see Gunther commit murder and are hunted down, one might have asked for a little more inventiveness with the funhouse lay-out and props, what with them being so creepy, fun and fascinating. One might have wished for a more creative killing spree to compensate, although there is quite a convoluted castration for Gunther, with his midriff crushed in the gears of the funhouse… yet it never feels as excessive as it ought to be. …Meanwhile, our Joey has skipped out of home and is enjoying the carnie all by himself, and in a further state of impotence can’t get inside the funhouse, which is surely his spiritual home. One can argue that his side-story finally goes nowhere. We could also leave the funhouse asking who the real monsters are… and that’s your standard issue horror coda right there. It will probably always work.

Tobe Hooper, 1981, USA

Persona

Ingmar Bergman, 1966

What you hardly read about Bergman is that he is often scary. If you are looking for a precursor to David Lynch's creepiness and surrealism, turn to the opening nightmare sequence of "Wild Strawberries"; or to the hanging woodsman in "Summer’s Children" for a genuine ghost story chill; or death walking the lounge in "Fanny and Alexander"; or the all-round eeriness of "Hour of the Wolf", amongst others. And this is before we have even encountered his essays in psychological breakdown. For someone who isn’t known as a horror writer, Bergman was very assured and casual with the genre’s motifs. "Persona", for example, not only has psychological breakdown and seemingly a personality-transference between an actress and her nurse, but also plays with a wealth of vampire imagery.Or, perhaps, we are dealing in split personality, which we must puzzle out and which is another horror staple. Bergman happily has his characters and dramas interacting with seemingly supernatural elements that may or may not be genuine. I have always loved this because you never know when he is going to spring these moments upon you, and when you are not watching as a horror audience, your guard is often down and the effect is often genuinely surprising and chilling.

"Persona" is a famously unsolvable mystery, and if the opening montage of images are clues, they don’t really help with answers: film stock reeling and burning up; an erect penis (originally censored, naturally); bodies in a morgue; a boy asleep like a corpse in a white empty room. He wakes… is he the actress’ son, dreaming of her, or is she dreaming of him? Or is he a manifestation of the nurse’s aborted child? We can wonder this later or after, when we know some stories concerning our main characters: an actress who refuses to speak or function, apparently in an artistic and existential collapse; and the nurse assigned to oversee her recuperation in a beach house. But it is the nurse who uses the actress’s silence for experiments in unburdening herself in a quintessential Bergman confession of an adulterous dalliance. When the nurse feels her confidence has been condescended and betrayed, a confusion of the women’s characters threatens meltdown. What is real and what is fantastic is not clear: does the actress’s husband really turn up to the beach house and mistake the nurse for his wife? Some kind of emotional vampirism is occurring here, and the actress pours out of fog to seduce her victim. There is also some sucking of blood, completely Nosferatu. Cinematic conventions being played with, where the screen burns up as if the projector is on fire from the drama, but somehow this is more akin to an emotional variation of the formal shock moment from a horror film (rather than, say, the kind of conceited self-reflexive trick of the fast-forward moment of Haneke’s "Funny Games").

It is open to readings of criticism of psychotherapy, and it also acts nicely as a tale of the unreal affinity and emotional demands audiences make of artists: the nurse (Bibi Andersson) may just as well be telling her secrets to a poster of Liv Ullman. But for all this stark, pretty imagery and genre bending, Bergman knows that the real horrors can be existential states of despair and fear, that non-communication, disloyalty and superciliousness can force wide open cracks in vulnerable people. Fascinating, frustrating and compelling, very few can force such ideas to work and transcend. Bergman had a vast output and range, and even now he never fails to surprise and, frequently, to chill.

Death in Venice

Death in Venice

Renowned masterpiece of mood and décor, nearly dialogue-free except for some flashbacks featuring hyperbolic, quite hammy arguments between a couple of artists. One of them, Dirk Bogarde, finds his career as a composer booed down and a breakdown follows, motivating a trip to Venice. The city seems to be in the seizure of barely concealed paroxysms of death and the decay. The similar corrosion and loneliness of the composer finds relief only in the beatific youthfulness of an adolescent male also staying in the decorative hotel. Scenes roll out slow and decorated with detail, as if to lull the viewer into the very wallpaper and as if staring at a busy painting for a long time. Bogarde pours his performance into carefully, almost painfully measured affected gestures of repression and expression. Everything possesses the aroma and reek of a bona fide classic of the old school. Finally, it floats into a funereal paean to the myth of cities, to aging, to loneliness (but perhaps a relieved and content loneliness)… and then, after all that hanging around, a handsome angel of death points into the distance, having cast furtive smiles at you all the while.

Morte a venezia, 1971, Luchino Visconti

"Halloween": the biopic (World of Remakes #1)

"HALLOWEEN":

THE BIOPIC

1/ Fear of the Remake.

Firstly, the original "Halloween" is scary. As a kid, it terrified me every time I watched it… for years… I have no idea how many times I have seen it, and even now I am happy to leave it on as wallpaper, because the direction alone is a pure treat. There’s a killer on the loose, and that’s all you need to know. You don’t need to know why.

Come the Twenty-First century and many previously scorned low-budget horrors had be reclaimed as cinematic classics, or at least worthy. And there seemed a greater and more cynical spate of old favourites being remade. Or "re-imagined". This isn’t anything new, and Horror has always been a highly, ahem, cannibalistic and incestuous genre. That and shamelessly derivative, of course. But to be a horror fan is, unlike proper critics, to find the gold in the trashy, and not to criticise the trash for not being shiny enough. Inevitably, a remake of "Halloween" was declared, and they said Rob Zombie was going to remake it. Well Zombie had earned a lot of fandom with his earlier features - "House of a 1,000 Corpses" and "The Devil’s Rejects". They showed promise, but lacked discipline and erred on what I’ll call the "heavy metal" vision of horror. He was known for white trash sleaze. Then we heard Zombie was going to give Michael Myers a proper childhood back-story. A white-trash back-story. It didn’t sound promising. It sounded like blasphemy. A small corner reserving judgement because they believed in Zombie; the rest of us did that thing of snorting our derision at Hollywood defiling the greats.

My first reaction was fascination. I groaned at the un-sophistication of the opening set-up. Repulsive stepfather cussing everyone in sight and if he wasn’t an abuser, that‘s probably only because he didn‘t have enough screen-time to get around to it. Mother-stripper. Michael Myers sister making weak gags about his masturbating. Baby wailing in this maelstrom. On the other hand, we had young Michael starting the morning by cleaning up having murdered another pet, and during the bad white trash breakfast dialogue asking for a replacement furry victim. The shaky-cam began to reveal itself as cinematic, not just Hollywood YouTube. We had standard school bullies who, naturally, brought with them a load of smut-talk concerning Michael’s mother. And then there was the first killing… the bully gets it and it’s horrible. Truly horrible. Something chilling sets in. After the family murders, Malcolm McDowell dominates Act II, which is concerned with Michael’s institutional treatment. Act III, and Michael is a gigantic slab of heavy metal meat, on the rampage in all washed-out ugly colours. There’s a station rest room with a black guy offering a Tarantino-esque segment. There are a lot of bloody bear breasts, firmly staking this as exploitational and unprogressive, maybe even cynical. It’s too long. I was waiting for it to end shoddily, but it doesn’t: the end is straightforward, nothing fancy. And yet.

It finished and it stayed with me. I saw it again. The dialogue was still weak, and yet I found I had remembered, and still recall it mostly as a silent movie. The camerawork is impressive still, utilising a variation on the handheld prowl cam brilliantly used by Carpenter; it shakes around the scenes and glances around the killing, often falling still on framing as consummate as the original. Here, rather than stalking and prowling, it’s like a voyeur-bug, or a detached part of Myer’s psyche watching himself. The early killings are compelling and eschew fast-cutting shock-editing for a more elongated sense of dread. The resonance is of matter-of-fact brutality, rather than cheap thrills. The view shakes around the murder of the stepfather, then it pauses as the blood floods from the bottom of the frame, off screen. As the household slaughter unfolds, Michael takes a moment to look outside at the fake horrors, all those trick-or-treaters. The final rampage has none of the thrills and clutch of suspense of the original, but it does give Michael a moment of utter pleading and confusion when he falls to his knees before his non-comprehending sister; and it does have a finely executed and extended metaphor of the old Myers house being torn apart by Michael from the inside.

As trite as the expression "re-imagining" is (smacking of denial as to the actual nature of the carrion-like "remake" beast eating from the good name of the original), Zombie’s "Halloween" almost validates the term. Zombie has filtered Carpenter’s original through his own agenda, and ultimately that is as it should be. The alternative is the kind of serviceable but unremarkable horror remake in the vein of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". I didn’t care that "Halloween" was too long (I rarely do). I chuckled at Malcolm McDowell showing everyone else how to actually dispense a line. I was convinced by Daeg Faerch’s angel/devil delivery: one minute momma’s boy, next silently creating corpses around the house. I wallowed in the sleaze, the flipside of Carpenter’s clean suburbia (decades later and suburbia had devolved into "Gummo" and "Suburbia"). Damn if the very choices mostly dreaded - extended and coloured-in Myers origins - became that which elevated Zombie’s version and gave a parallel vision of the original. It’s more grungy than heavy-metal. With a more focused basis - using Carpenter’s original rather than Zombie’s own idea - Zombie arguably revealed more disciplined and mature aesthetic compared to, say, the "Natural Born Killers" style of throw-every-at-the-wall-hope-it-hits-on-a-statement of his earlier efforts. It was more "Martin" and "Henry" than "Friday the 13th" and "Black Christmas". There was meaning in this remake.

2/ The Ups and Downs of Michael Myers

In ‘Film Comment Magazine’ (March/April 2008), Nathan Lee lays out the proper way to watch Zombie’s "Halloween": not as a teen-titillating slasher, but as a biopic. Indeed, it sports all the obvious, clunky dialogue typical of biopics of even Oscar-fraternising repute such as "Walk the Line". It follows a linear childhood-to-adulthood timeline, but it also inverts the biopic genre. Whereas many biographies follow the Lazarus and martyrdom templates, Zombie offers up Myer’s life story as an unstoppable, scarcely explicable fall from barely held grace. There are two endings to "Halloween", one where Myers achieves some glint of redemption in sparing his sister, and the other in a faintly ambiguous showdown where she kills him. This latter is the version I saw theatrically, and the one I base my comments upon. The former offers some respite, some speck of humanity for Myers; the latter doesn’t, as he pursues his sister through the wreck of their childhood home only for her to pull a Final Girl turn-around. But even with the more positive ending, this isn’t a story of redemption like many biographies, but of complete psychological collapse. (For your comparison: "There Will Be Blood".)

Zombie is at pains to trace the line between internal and external psychological climates that drive Michael to his first kills - and a second viewing reveals the earliest murders as unforgettable and shocking as Carpenter’s original. Then to the failings and inability of institutions to help, indeed, they compound Myers’ psychosis. When the prison guards go on a despicable spree to abuse their inmates, it’s trashy enough, but also reminiscent of similar scenes in Lynch’s "The Elephant Man". But here, Myers is not salvaged by the kindness of civil society, but crushed in its wheels in a world where everything seems to be devolving, and the niceness of suburbia seems to barely compensate. The institutions, as represented by Malcolm McDowell’s psychologist, seem to be making stabs at humanitarianism, even towards someone like Michael Myers; but their smugness, self-congratulatory manner and inability to prevent their charge’s complete psychological collapse allow Myers the total monster to fester until he sees his chance to unleash himself. It is probably this middle section that bores those that come for the tits-and-blood that Zombie can’t help but wallow in and which, at first glance, appears to be his main conclusion to all that has gone before. But this second act shows the extent of Zombie’s ambition and dedication that he pushes the boundaries of the slasher form, by stopping the whole show to make sure we see the final environmental reasons for the evolution of this monster. Arguably, watching Michael’s psychological retreat from the world is just as distressing as his early murders. And also, Zombie is not interested in evolving Myers into a Myth. Myers is a pure meat-and-potatoes monster.

As a biopic, Zombie’s "Halloween" offers qualities that Carpenter’s peerless original did not: despair, pathos and a genuine slice of tragedy. It is not a delicate piece, but it is considered in its rendering and chilling in its detachment, a detachment that hides a surprisingly curious and humanitarian core. Why is Myers? it asks. The camera not only spies, it pries. It asks without pretensions to knowing. Although rampaging is all it ultimately concludes, this is only because "Halloween" knows we have no answers. For these reasons, it is a worthy remake, a genuine re-imagining, and, I expect over time, it will be revealed as a minor classic on its own merits.

HALLOWEEN

"Halloween":

Suburbia, Sex, Slashers

1: The Mystery of Michael Myers

It goes without saying that ‘faceless’, expressionless, silent killers terrify due to their apparent emotionless and impenetrable veneer. To this deliberate end, Michael Myers of John Carpenter’s "Halloween" has the gimmick of the mask - famously, a William Shatner mask. We see Myers’ face only twice: as a child, and as an adult in the frenzy of killing - and in the latter example he desperately pulls the mask back over his face. Once the mask becomes his true visage, he moves from Myers to the boogeyman, or The Shape, elevating to mythical and iconic status, before our eyes, within the film and across its fan-base. No definitive explanation is given as to why Michael murders his sister, and this too is deliberate ~ unlike "Nightmares in a Damaged Brain", it is not the confused witnessing of the sexual act that triggers him, the primal scene. Is it his suspicion of his sister’s sexual nature that activates him, perhaps? Prepubescent, incestuous jealousy? We assume it’s the deviant teenage sex, as we always do, but we really have little evidence. Or did he always intended to kill from the moment he approaches the house? Obviously this lack of motivation is essential to Myers: it matters not why he kills, only that he does, He’s the boogeyman.

Myers enters his own home like an intruder, by means of a definitive use of point-of-view hand-held camera, gliding and searching an unremarkable suburban home. And the camera goes out of focus at one point so we cannot identify the hand reaching for a knife, withholding the killer’s identity until the prologue’s shock revelation. (In fact, this is [producer] Debra Hill’s hand, which creates a far more mundane reason for this out-of-focus moment: to disguise the fact that it was not a child’s not for the sake of surprise revelation, but for purely practicality.) It is a seminal horror film opening: smooth, brilliantly executed, wry, chilling, thrilling and promising all the unspeakable terrors to come.

Far less politically charged than the new living dead, Texan cannibals and last houses on the left, "Halloween" nevertheless subversively laid bare the fragility of the post-Baby Boom suburban opulence. The old monster-on-the loose scenario was updated and rampant in your conservatively inclined leafy town, subtext relatively intact. Myers might just as well be a man in a rubber suit, so alien and inhuman is he. Just because you have a nice house, it won’t stop him, and he doesn’t roar and run so that you call the military in either. Nonetheless, Myers is a force of nature: that unleashed Id, dispatching sexually active young adults; a smalltown horror that doesn’t know to stay dead, finally transcending himself into a supernatural, mythical entity.

There is little realism to Myers: his sole redeeming feature is that he was once a child, but this is barely substantial: it is simply the first shock and twist. Even as a child, when his Halloween mask is first taken from his face by his parents, the face is equally blank and unreadable. His childness - I.e., his vulnerability and innocence - it’s an assumption he discards presumably as soon as he can. He suffers none of the detailed psychological disturbances of "Nightmares in a Damaged Brain"; he does not possess any knowing smirks like the variably human Damien Antichrist of "The Omen" series. There is no filling-in of Myers’ childhood; no distraught but insightful interviews with the parents; no concept that rehabilitation will redeem him, or that he even qualifies for it. Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) is almost there simply to run around refuting Myers’ ability to be human, to declare the blank concerning ‘The Blank’. Loomis is not so far from Kevin McCarthy at the end of "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers", trying to warn the impenetrable traffic of an alien invasion, bringing about the end of humanity. There is no attempt to endow Michael Myers with any sympathy or reasoning, and therefore he ends up forever the inhumane murderous child. Damaged children and mutant offspring have always been essential to the genre, as much as child abuse has created a large proportion of TV "tragedy" drama. Robin Wood has rightly identified childhood itself as a state of "Otherness"[1]. Myers is s parental, cultural and social nightmare. What is he the result of? Idealised but ineffectual Baby Boomer parents? The net result of repression in a Christian-Conservative-Capitalist society? The manifestation of virgin-babysitter Laurie’s fear of sexual punishment and the predatory male? Or is he just, you know, plain bad?

[1] The other states of Otherness is to be: other people; woman; the proletariat; other cultures; ethnic; alternative ideologies/politcal systems; sexually ‘deviant’ - & children. ~ Robin Wood, "An Introduction to the American Horror Film", in Movies and Method: volume II, ed. Bill Nicholls, (University of California Press, London, 1985) pg.199-200.

2: The Friends of Michael Myers

Sidestepping the slasher’s origins in giallo (like a disreputable pal to American thrillers, what with all that European explicitness), in its American horror context "Halloween" was released the same year [1978] as "Damien – Omen II" and "The Fury"; 1977 had offered "Audrey Rose", "The Exorcist II: the Heretic" and "The Island of Doctor Moreau". All these were mainstream expressions of the horror genre, all possessing monstrous offspring. Their subtexts were filtered through a middle-class, neo-Gothic setting and traditional Christian and conservative ethic, working on a vision that at once embraced and then rejected modernity in all its opulence, as well as contemporary science for solutions to spiritual questions and advancements. By contrast, the alternative low-budget scene offered the likes of "The Hills Have Eyes", "Night of the Living Dead" and "I Spit on Your Grave" alongside "Halloween". Unsurprisingly the big-budget horrors reaffirmed your basic status quo of Good and/vs. Evil, whereas the independents, in an post-Vietnam era, just weren’t so sure.

George Romero and Tobe Hooper had already clearly pointed out how horror had a natural affinity for documentary technique and aesthetic. Despite being low-budget and ostensibly modest, Carpenter’s "Halloween" helped point to how the new wave of horror could carry a modest but slick sheen too. Free from the demands of mainstream production, finding it increasing easier to at least get hold of a camera, the low-budget filmmakers were able to carve new paths through taboos, and their influences were permanent. Damien’s smirk in "The Omen" signifies the audience’s complicity in the enjoyment of such high-concept, absurd demonic shenanigans; but "Halloween’s" killer offspring is far too close to home, confirming our fears for our children left unsupervised there, confirming our worst fears about their promiscuity, about the realism of prowlers and murderers. Despite Myer’s supernatural evolution, it is his corroboration of our paranoia and worst fears that consolidates his mythic qualities. That’s no big secret, but nevertheless, despite its homage to the fun of fear, therein lies the poignancy of Carpenter’s film.

It is easy to see how Aurum concludes that "by sidestepping social or moral comment, [Halloween] offers a foolproof blueprint for bloody violence," [2] but Halloween offers very little blood and by-passes easy moralising in order to create a symbol of a very real and deep fear for a fresh-packed suburban generation. Myers is a moral void, ergo inhuman, ergo a killer. When he kills his sister, he watches himself stabbing her; later he will use the same gaze to study his victim as they hang dying upon the wall. It is as if he cannot understand or believe what he has done, his fascination very much like a child pouring acid upon a slug or smashing bottles. Y’know: just to see. And further to this, Carpenter, and his unsurpassed use of prowling Panavision camera toys with us and our nerves in the same way. And again it links the serial killer deeply with voyeurism, and therein cinema itself. What does it mean to watch someone being killed, even cinematically? In this way, Myers is the very passive-aggressive audience that simultaneously celebrates the fear he provokes in them. This alertness to voyeurism was always present in killer films, (e.g. "The Spiral Staircase") but Myers was a somewhat quieter and decidedly modern rendition of your Hitchcock killers or Peeping Toms. Pretty soon, serial killers were going to be a sub-genre all of their own.

Legend has it that from "Psycho" and "Halloween", a brand new batch of novelty murders were born. If "Psycho" was the sly entertainer, "Halloween" was the overachieving runt and "Peeping Tom" the despised black sheep, academically pointing to the phobias and perversions of his peers. "Psycho" leads to "Silence of the Lambs". "Halloween" led immediately to "Friday the 13th", whereupon the lineage immediately stunts itself, and to too many derivatives to speak of; latterly revived somewhat by post-modernism and post-MTV ‘cool’ of "Scream". "Peeping Tom" led to… "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", "Man Bits Dog" and "Funny Games", perhaps. Arguably it was going to be David Fincher's "Se7en" that distilled all these into one fin de siecle package, and then Fincher's "Zodiac" that denied all the showbiz of the genre by treating it purely as police procedural and puzzle. The urban-legend-come-super-naturally true would give the world Freddy Kruger (a despicable but safely fantastic horror) and Candyman (ditto)… And so on. Nevertheless "Halloween" remains a truly entertaining and influential piece, a recognised classic and, due to its staking a claim on a seasonal holiday, classic and eternal.

[2] Halloween review, the Aurum Encyclopedia of Horror, pg. 329.

 

 

3: Myers is a Bad Date

It is impossible to avoid reflecting upon serial killer flicks without mentioning Carol J. Clover’s concept of ‘The Final Girl’: a masculinised heroine who survives or destroys the serial killer [3]; she is a homoerotic stand-in for the male audience, and thereby denies feminist reading. But it seems short-sighted to assume that any violent female reaction to a male threat immediately endows her with unquestionably masculine traits [4], or even that her use of a knife immediately endows her with a substitute phallus ~ sometimes a weapon is just a weapon (it depends upon representation, context, etc.). ‘The Final Girl’ also more-or-less sidesteps the erotic appeal of the female in distress to the male audience. The female body is threatened and damaged in the scenario, it is stabbed and slashed and revealed, pierced and bloodied; often taking the form of a stab-and-strip show. The Final Girl is not the only surrogate upon which the male gaze can project his own vulnerability and fears, apparently ‘feminine’ qualities. There are those also played out through male surrogates, the erotic appeal of the female left intact: these apprehensions are played out in an archetype which might be termed the Male Protector.

In many horrors, the desire for the male to protect the female is stimulated and challenged, and almost always they fail. Defending one’s loved ones is deeply fixed in the traditional male gender role, and slasher flicks - unlike action films - spell out how fathers, husbands and boyfriends can/will fail as the Male Protector. The threat is often another, stronger, homicidal male who wants to deny other males their sex-lives and to punish the females for theirs. Films like "Halloween" renders the male fear of being unable to save and safeguard the female body and feminine objects of lust and affection from superior male predators. This arousal and failure of the Male Protector, who is often dispatched early, symbolises all kinds of impotency. Other times the dynamic might change and become more complex when the threat facing the Male Protector is a mother ~ "Psycho", "Friday the 13th", "Deep Red", etc. In "Black Christmas", the final twist rests upon the Male Protector’s failure to recognise the female threat. These latter films also show the perceived homoeroticism of The Final Girl as failing to address female violence.

The slasher film also services rape-revenge fantasies for women. The surviving and central/final girl may not actually be violated, but her fear and the threat of it alone is enough to validate extreme self defence. After all, she must dispatch the killer in a gratuitous, graphic and inventive manner to satisfy revenge for having been stalked and humiliated. Oh, and the slaughter of her pals. Evidently, this also co-insides with the need for a show-stopping, sweaty, exhausted end to the cinematic experience, and we are often left celebrating female endurance and resourcefulness. Faceless or excessive male sexuality, often seen as violent, warrants extermination, or at least a good castration. In Abel Ferrara’s "Ms. 45: Angel of Death", the mere ability of men to breathe heavily upon the disturbed woman Thana is enough to earn their deaths (and she goes one better than wearing virginal white: she dresses as a nun!). Laurie in "Halloween" avoids symbolic rape, but she must pay back Michael Myers for what he has done to her friends, as if they were but rehearsals for her potential fate. This is why she must witness her friend’s corpses, in a moment of amassed horrific revelation and plot assemblage. Through these films, female protagonists are allowed the power to survive and eliminate the sexual abuses suffered by all sisterhood, past and present.

[4] Another key qualification of the masculine "Final Girl" that Clover states is their given unisex name: Laurie in Halloween, Marti in Hell Night, but this is obviously highly limited and easily dismissed once past a handful of final girl candidates.

4: Michael Myers is a Monster

William Schoell finds Halloween endowed with tedium, repetitious music, a rip-off of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (they are, of course, two quite different beasts, but…). He says: "Bloodless and pedestrian, Halloween just sits there when it should be doing something," despite its "nice premise." [5] Alternatively, "Halloween" anticipates the mythologizing of the modern serial murderer; the repetition of the score may be seen as a motif for the killer’s relentlessness [6]; its bloodlessness may reflect only a "comparative tastefulness" [7]. He is correct on the mythologizing and the score, but also misses the film’s reliance upon build-up, menace and suspense rather than cheap gory pay-offs, as used by its many imitators. Further, it is often the lesser known Bob Clark film "Black Christmas" (1975) that is often credited with forerunning the youth-orientated slasher genre, and is a far more identifiable forerunner for "Halloween" than "Texas Chainsaw", if only in atmosphere and use of a national ‘holiday’. Or, as Kim Newman puts it, "'Halloween' was about as original as an Italian Western remake of a samurai epic" [8].

Nevertheless Myers was a culmination of his killing predecessors, and for better or worse pointed the way ahead. The originality of "Halloween" is obvious: in near-definitive and timeless use of its widescreen Panavision streetscapes and of subjective camera; in its non-Gothic unmannered acting reminiscent more of Seventies neo-realist thrillers (all the camp is neatly distilled into Pleasance‘s Loomis); in bringing giallo traits to American killer flicks; in the thick but modernised shadows and sudden shocks; in truly giving the girls centre stage and a fighting chance for a feminised age; in bringing the slaughter to suburbia. Both in technical execution and entertainment value, it rewards study and repeated viewing. It remains seminal as a purveyor and portrayal of contemporary fears.

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NOTE: This article is a shorter version of a work-in-progress chapter for my intended book on horror/thriller cinema, "The Gory Id: essays on killer films".

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[5] Schoell, Stay Out of the Shower: the shocker film phenomenon, (Robinson Publishing, London, 1988) pg. 133.
[6] Carpenter has often said how the film did not frighten preview audiences at all until the score was added.
[7] Schoell, pg. 134.
[8] Kim Newman, Nightmare Movies, (Harmony Books, New York, 1988) pg. 144.

The Grunts: a live show review

I went to see The Grunts play at The Good Ship (Kilburn, 3/10/08). A friend of mine said that they sounded too much like their influences. When chatting with Paul, bassist with The Grunts for six months or so and counting, he said he felt The Grunts sounded like a lot of bands you know, but not exactly like any of them. I'm going to agree with Paul here. The Grunts are something like Echo and the Bunnymen on Route 66. High churches of guitars steeped in Americana: Jim Jones, highways, koolaid, purple hearts, Jerry Springer and endless summers all get a reference in The Grunts, and in a live show, the swagger and rootsy origins of the songs are even more evident.

Bearing in mind that this is an Irish band, homed in Cork, and it's even more admirable that they pull it off. They can be funny too, though it's humour of the dry kind: "I'm a hetero-on-Death-Row-sexual" hollars Max Vanilla on their jeans-busting declaration "Hetero". It's satirical, surely, right? Their live shows are less glacial than the recordings (where Max's favourites, The Bunnymen, are definite inspirations in sound, though dirtier), but they are no less huge and sweeping, just a little more unashamed rock. They start with "Party Weirdo", their dancefloor anthem. They play songs about Jerry Springer being god. "If It Feels Good Do It" is one of my favourites, soaring and celebratory as Max croons "She won't enjoy the summer, 'coz she doesn't turn anybody on." The rhythm section bangs and buzzes along, holding down the tune as Max lets loose a dazzlement of guitar frenzy. Max's right hand works itself into a dervish of upward string-thrashing, culling a variety of sounds before even touching an effects pedal. Meanwhile, his left hand often works the frets like a pump-action shotgun. It really has to be seen, and it's mesmerising. His stage talk is mild mannered, and his voice carries a natural Irish melody, but he shouts and sours during the songs, thoroughly unleashed. In closing, Zack of The Refusniks joins The Grunts onstage to sing the closing numbers, and it all ends with "If The Leader of a Doomsday Cult Said", Max's perversion of the kind of dancefloor anthem they started with.

Sure, they sound a lot like what you know, but in the way that they take their influences and run with them, creating a thoroughly dark, satirical, jubilant and rocking-out that is truly disarming and thoroughly engaging on a number of levels. I have liked The Grunts for a long time, and it's a joy to see them prove they are much more in a live show.

THE DARK KNIGHT

Christopher Nolan, 2008

1: So much has been written about this flick that my words are purely redundant, but here I go anyhow. A note on my reaction to the phenomenon that is the reaction to The Dark Knight: I saw it and I loved it. Chock full of too much, and yet I felt it to be a brilliant and convincing balancing act. It's pretensions to seriousness are captivating, and it's also great entertainment. To be clear: I have been a fan of the comics medium since I was eleven and although I buy very few super hero titles now (I still buy a lot, but not superhero titles: there are more than enough horror and alternative titles out there to eat into my cash) but I still have a very soft spot for Batman.

And then, inevitably, I sought out critical reaction. There is so much of it, equal parts adoration and hate (perhaps a little more of the former), and both sides were convincing. To varying degrees. Fight scenes incomprehensible? I didn't think so. Ledger over-rated? No. When they fall out, land on the car without a blemish, leaving Joker unchallenged in a party full of people... that's weak on plausibility. Yes it is. The game theory experiment with one "bad" ferry population and one "good" and a button for blowing the other sky-high... plausibility straining and doesn't work. Possibly (but I'll go with it, because it's very Joker). Batman is a fascist. Well, yeh, Batman has always been, to varying degrees, engaged and complicated by issues of fascism. Most self-evidently in Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight" graphic novel.

And so on.

But most of the detractions seemed based upon the premise that, well, pfft, this is a comic book movie. This was declared by those that think "comic book" means "super-hero"; those without knowledge of the breadth and density of the comic book medium. I didn't recall much focus on the fact that being based on a comic was a dubious origin for, say, "Ghost World", "A History of Violence" and "30 Days of Night". In fact, some said it wasn't comic book enough, and how dare it try to be more. I could stock this piecce full of links to pros and cons articles, but it's all out there if you dare. I was disenchanted with the amount of reviews that simply couldn't digest a superhero film that tried to be as dense and outrageously over-reachings as, you know, any other proper film; and at those that felt that picking at presumed plot holes and plausibility weaknesses were a sign that it didn't work as a whole - I don't believe any of the arguable weaknesses of The Dark Knight are enough to bring the whole scaffolding down. No, I thought: it is still a brilliant blockbuster sprawling crime drama, huge and ambitious and fun.

2: The amount of politics surrounding this blockbuster is phenomenal: the Right Wing claming it as their own, even casting Bruce Wayne as a Bush figure; liberals not trusting its somewhat conservative conclusions (police and legal people are okay and stuff, but in the end, you gotta bend the law to clean up the streets). But the fact that a Blockbuster is worth so much debate is considerable, and proper debate, not just nitpicking at its evident weak spots as an act of contrariness. Nolan directs at such speed and with such confidence, you can barely pause to consider all the ideas it’s taking on. Where "Spider-Man 3" was an embarrassment when trying to juggle all its bad-guys, Nolan delivers an extensive roll call of Batman’s finest enemies (The Scarecrow, The Joker, Two-Face) and a batch of organised crime bad-guys too, all without losing grip. You’ve got gun-wielding copycat vigilantes; game-show like moral dilemmas featuring two ferries and explosive devices (vintage Joker! Even is Mark Kermode argues convincingly that the scene doesn‘t work); Bruce Wayne about to step aside to let a brighter light lead the way to cleaning up the streets; the rise and fall of Harvey Dent; the wit and wisdom of Alfred; some show-stopping action scenes; and then you have the Joker.

Heath Ledger’s Joker is a revelation and deserving of every accolade given. His Joker comes from the inside-out, rather than the Nicholson outside-in showman. Is this the first comic book adaptation to actually give a sense that absurd characters like Joker and Two-Face could actually exist? Nolan’s fidelity to credibility gives the whole excessive carnival a realism. That Joker slash-mouth and caked face-paint make-up is a true stroke of genius. It never fails to unsettle and convince simultaneously. Rightly, the Joker here is a sado-masochist whose freakish appearance and alarming manner obscure a frighteningly precise intelligence - here, he’s smarter than Batman, it seems. Even in losing, Joker is victorious for the losses, sacrifices, compromises and horrors of what madness and chaos can truly achieve have been too great. And Ledger is funny: not because he is given lame quips; it’s in the performance, from the first moment he walks on, seemingly mocking his own manic laugh.

The whole show tries to have all its cake and then some, biting off more than it can chew, genuinely trying to exceed it’s superhero origins. Mostly it holds up and where it doesn’t, entertainment and ambition make up for it. It is in the little choices where it impresses: so kinetic, stuffed and fast is the plot and action that you might miss the subversion of the conclusion one expects from supero-hero films ("Iron Man", "The incredible Hulk", "Hellboy" etc.): there is no final fistfight resolving things here; rather we are left with more moral dilemmas and the nominally good haggling with the bad over the life of a child.

August-September filmwatch: Hitcockian, man-made and monsterous and incoherent horrors

It occurs to me that all the films I have watched in this period were horror films to some degree or other. “Night of the Sunflowers” isn’t strictly a horror film, but it has horror and thriller ingredients and, like “The Mist” is concerned with the fear of the mistakes that we make. Similarly, “Rear Window” isn’t strictly a horror, but it is a murder mystery with some barely concealed dwelling on dismemberment. “Disturbia” gives “Rear Window” to Twenty-First Century youths - and there is also a decidedly retro-Hitcockian feel to “Vacancy” which, like “Them”, reduces the couple-under-siege, psychological torture tour-de-forces of modern horror down to the bare bones in tight, brief packages. I also saw a good monster movie, and some terrible, terrible ones…



Night of the Sunflowers / Noche de los girasoles, La

(Jorge Sanchez-Cabezudo, 2006)
- Spanish thriller more concerned with the environmental influences and errors of judgement than just the mechanics of the murder. In rural Spain, there are dead towns, dead-end lives and rapists at large. Ugly opportunities are taken for a variety of reasons: to escape small town life; to preserve the civilised life one has; to succumb to barely repressed sexual and murderous urges. There is black humour too: the only two residents of a deserted town are locked in a stubborn feudal conflict. Excellently performed and revealed through a non-linear, multi-perspective narrative, this makes for a slightly chilly and absorbing thriller.





Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest
(James D.R. Hickox, 1995)
Inexplicably long-running series: this third offering starts with interesting enough good/bad siblings and country/city conflicts, but descends into a hilarious final monster attack in which toy humans get devoured… the kind of deliriously bad effect you probably wouldn’t have thought possible in the modern age. And the monster monent strangely winning for that. Otherwise, there are a couple of nasty deaths, some choppy narrative, increasing incoherence and a strong central performance by Daniel Cerny as Eli holding the nonsense together.

Darkness

(Jaume Balagueró , 2002)Despite early promise and some good ghostly reveals, “Darkness” is a total incoherent mess that doesn’t know what on earth it is. Increasingly silly character behaviour and cripplingly bad dialogue add to the groans. The first clue is that all the carefully composed moments of spookiness give way to strobe-cutting flashback ‘scares’, a latterday horror film tic that acts more to diffuse unease and real scares. By the time we get to things crawling across ceilings, all coherence and interest has long since been lost. Bafflingly bad.



Dinocroc
(Kevin O'Neill, 2004)
- Unremarkable but fun enough monster flick from the Roger Corman. The Dinocroc is more Raptor-Rex wannabe; the Australian croc hunter is all Paul Hogan and probably offensively stereotypical; the bad guys are the heartless company scientists, and there are plenty of moments you recognise as being done better in other films… Notable only for its grandstanding set piece where the horror kid, usually savvy and resourceful, doesn’t make it past halfway through the film.


Them/Ils
(David Moreau & Xavier Palud, 2006)Stripped down shocker, wins for washed out ghost-house look and genuinely frightening mid-section, and for leaping into something a little more surprisingly socially charged by the end. Probably doesn’t wholly gel, but it proves the old premise of a couple under siege and terrorised from unknown tormenters can still work with a cool aesthetic, good scares, a little artiness and a dab of social commentary. Highly recommended.


Disturbia

(D.J. Caruso, 2007)- “Rear Window” for sexy Twenty-First Century teens; or “My Summer Of Murders”. Reaches its peak early with its opening car-crash and despite Shia Labouf’s winningly natural performance, quickly exposes itself as having little new to offer. There’s no suspense concerning whether or not the neighbour is a serial killer (he is) or whether the hot girl next door will get it on with our main man (she does) or whether it will all ultimately play safe whilst indulging in an excessive and unnecessary faux-gothic ending (it does). Unlike Hitchcock, there is no interest here on the nature of voyeurism or people and privacy. Reminded me a lot of those 1980s Hollywood serial killer flicks: slightly edgy, enjoyable in passing, but ultimately toothless.


Rear Window

(Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)The real deal. Stuck at home overlooking his neighbours in the square, James Stewart does what comes naturally to a photographer, or anyone with an artistic bent, and becomes voyeuristic in both appreciation of his neighbours and for cheap spying thrills. He’s also avoiding committing to his gorgeous girlfriend… but luckily their love-life spices up when she too is convinced that the neighbour across the way has murdered his wife. Little perversities and kinks like this are quintessential Hitchcock and all the better for not being overstated. Likewise, there is plenty of grisliness going on, just not on camera. Plus, slowly, we too get involved with the little life stories of the neighbours, so it’s not just an exercise in cinematic and narrative high concept cleverness, though it’s that too. For all his reputed detachment and odd callousness, Hitchcock’s design shows real empathy for those populating the tiny films in the windows opposite.



Devil Times Five
(Sean MacGregor (& David Sheldon [uncredited]), 1974)
One of those rewarding little oddities for those that enjoy rough-edged low budget strangeness and exploitation with slightly offbeat trimmings. In the 1970s, a bunch of adults under the domineering finger of Papa Doc head out to a summer house for business and bonding; simultaneously, a bus carrying a bunch of homicidal kids crashes and lets loose the murderous gang. I am not sure what kind of institution for the mentally ill would allow their young charges to dress up in the cookie clothes of their own choosing, but there ya go. There’s some gratuitous breast-revealing bitch-fighting, a thoroughly contrived death-by-piranha, some padding here and there as murder scenes play out in slow….slow-motion, some solid b-movie acting… It is never quite as interesting as it ought to be: the precocious intelligent kid (Leif Garrett) is always undermined by the one that dresses like a soldier and spouts military speak evidently learnt from bad war movies. Leif is the most bizarre, even alongside the homicidal nun, as he goes tearing off a wig every now and then, cross-dressing in the film’s one surprise reveal, and cursing, purring vengefully, ambiguously, “That’s it! You’re all mine, Harvey Beckerman.” Filmed by two different directors when the first didn’t produce enough usable material, then in true z-movie fashion it went through a number of monikers, “Devils Time Five” is probably less than the sum of its oddness, but it has plenty of interest and strangeness to interest.


Vacancy
(Nimród Antal, 2007)
Another stripped-down terrorised couple flick, more Hitchcock-that-never-was. More modest and less memorable than “Them/Ils”, but this too has a frightening midsection and wins with excellent production design and retro-packaging. The excellent Saul Bass-like credit sequences give way to motel décor that evoke a set left over from a film that hasn’t yet heard that Hitchcock has been dead a while, and yet, strangely, has heard of snuff films and ‘70s exploitation. Excellent performances from the leads and credible characterisations help immensely. Nothing new, but solid, fairly scary and enjoyable.





Hellboy: Blood & Iron
(Victor Cook & Tad Stones, 2007, TV film)
Another animated film from Hellboy, after the Oriental horrors of “Storm of Swords”. This is a slightly lesser tale, but nevertheless stays true to the Hellboy formula: losts of monsters and ghosts, a story that escalates into near-incoherence, all knocked into conclusion with a fist-fight showdown. And Hellboy says “Oh crap” at some point. Engrossing with fine voice work and chock full of weirdoes, creepiness and monster excess.


Wilderness
(Michael J Bassett, 2006)- A bunch of youth offenders are sent to an island for a “rehabilitative” exercise after they are all held responsible for driving one of their own to suicide. The packaging for “Wilderness” has a pair of monstrous jaws coming for you, but don’t be fooled: there are no monsters here, and the horror of killer dogs is secondary to the “Deliverance”-style revenge flick. The barking monstrosities are, ya know, “us”. The characters are so repulsive and weak, and their dialogue the same, that there is nothing to care about and no reason to worry or be scared. A couple of gory death scenes divert, but, just like director Michael J. Basset’s equally terrible “Death Watch”, the initially intriguing set-up devolves rapidly. Everything caves into macho posturing and absurd bickering in lieu of drama, so that it all ends up bellowing such absurdities as “Kill me like a man!” The worst kind of cheap, weak British soap operatics with some kinda juvenile pretensions to social commentary. Avoid.


The Garden
(Don Michael Paul, 2006)
Garbled religiously-themed horror. Lance Henrickson is the Devil in a country old-timer guise, trying to tempt someone to eat from the tree from Eden, growing just outside his house in view of the porch. Everything is undermined by the fact that characters react in an unconvincing manner throughout. All credibility is subservient to plot whim and plot points mostly come to nothing. The boy goes through enough to be traumatised ten times over, but his only reaction is to act piously. Annoyingly pious. There is a religious scientist who tells the boy’s father that the kid has visions of another dimension… and no one bats an eyelid. The boy has a history of self-harm but this doesn’t seem to bother anyone much. When he cuts himself during an obligatory session of bullying, the bully apparently just gets tutted at … and the self-harm comes to nothing. The ghosts of the victims… come to nothing. The visions… come to nothing. When the father and son have a serious car crash, all they need is a little bed rest. When the annoying scientist lady get murdered, no one follows it up. When the boy sees the irritatingly smug scientist lady murdered by the sinister old man Lance… he does nothing and he and the Devil just use Chess metaphors to confront on another. When the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse turn up, they exercise their penchant for slice-and-dice horror and then… well, then everyone nods at each other, what with the Devil having been defeated and all. One wonders if they are all going to group hug and praise the lord, ghosts and all. There’s probably something interesting trying to get out, but it becomes obvious that there’s nothing to creep the audience out, or to make sense, long before the end.