Ghosts of Christmas Past

Quick, what movie invented the slasher genre, with all the beats that later became clichés – right down to having the killer strike on a holiday? Halloween, right? Everybody knows that. Well… not quite. While John Carpenter’s film definitely took Psycho to the next level, it was Black Christmas that came first – by about 4 years!



Viewing Black Christmas today, one might be tempted to conclude that it really adds nothing to the genre – until one realizes that it is the genre. Some of the most memorable thing – including the infamous telephone harassment – started here. The sorority house as a setting – that started here too. Some might be tempted to say, wait, ‘didn’t Ted Bundy kill a bunch of girls in a sorority house one winter in real life?’, and the answer is yes, that’s true – but that didn’t happen until 1978 – four years after this film came out.

The cast all does a fine job, especially John Saxon as the sober police lieutenant, and Margot Kidder, though almost old enough to be the mother of some of her co-stars, manages a convincing enough performance as the sorority’s requisite bad girl.

What’s to say about The Exorcist (the version you’ve never seen), except that you have seen it – or at the very least, like Black Christmas, through cultural osmosis you’ve practically seen the whole film end-to-end, even if you’ve never sat down and watched it.



Released the day after Christmas the year before Black Christmas, the evil antagonist of The Exorcist shares a lot in common, vocally anyway, to the villain of that piece, even though here it’s a demon (possibly the Devil himself) and in the former it’s (presumably) and entirely terrestrial villain.

However, unlike Black Christmas whose ending still packs a decent punch, The Exorcist’s ending seems a bit pat nowadays. Still, the version you’ve never seen restores the hitherto missing ‘spider-walk’ scene, and that alone makes it worth checking out (again).

Stephen King films you missed...

The Halloween season is upon us once again, and you know what that means – it’s time once again to resume my annual tradition of posting a bunch of bunch of reviews of movies in the spirit of the season.

If we accept that Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft were primarily known for their short stories, then the most successful American horror novelist would have to be Stephen King.

Following the smash success of Brian DePalma’s adaptation of Carrie in 1976, nearly every available King property was being snapped up for the big screen treatment. By the early 80s they were flooding into theaters. 1983 alone saw the release of no less than 3 feature films and a few shorts based on King stories.

While Carrie and The Shining are justifiably considered classics, let’s take a look at a couple of the lesser known & discussed King films from that time.

One problem in discussing ‘horror’ films of this era is that we don’t really think of these things as horror movies anymore. Boris Karloff thought that the name ‘terror film’ was more appropriate for the genre since the goal isn’t always to horrify (today’s ‘horror’ movies heavy reliance on shock value aside) but to terrify. The horror genre changes from decade to decade, and while gore and startling scares may be the norm now, there are other types of horror films…

Take, for example, The Dead Zone.

This is an understated, low budget, haunting film that catches King, director David Cronenberg, and actor Christopher Walken all at the top of their games. Walken plays a teacher who develops precognition. But, far from being a blessing, he finds the power is a curse as his life slowly disintegrates. By today's standards, this low budget film would probably be relegated to Movie of the Week status, but that doesn't diminish its power. Definitely worth checking out if you are interested in something that is more thought provoking than the average horror movie.

At the other end of the spectrum from the thoughtful and introspective The Dead Zone is John Carpenter’s Christine.

This is a deliberate non-thinking movie. But, with a tagline like, ‘Body by Plymouth, soul by Satan!’ you pretty much know what you’re in for. It’s a popcorn film, pure and simple. We’ll have no complaints from the peanut gallery about the hows or whys – look, it’s an evil car that kills people, that’s all you need to know. Expect incredible cheese. Expect that everyone’s attempt to escape the killer car involves running down streets and alleys, never into buildings, through the woods, or even just up a flight of stairs, and you’ll not be disappointed. Toss in a fun, loveable rock and roll soundtrack, and the always-awesome Harry Dean Stanton in a minor role, and you have a movie custom made for six packs and drive-ins.

Werewolves

Werewolf of London



Released in 1935, Werewolf of London was the first werewolf “talkie” werewolf film ever made. It was one of the first films in the Universal monster series, and while not as good as The Wolf Man, it still holds up pretty well today.

Like a lot of the thrillers of the day, it relies heavily on dialogue and mood. And it has some great dialogue, such as, “You are foolish, but without fools there would be no wisdom". But it’s technical aspects were very good for it’s time too. Particularly the way the transformation sequences were handled, and a very clever telephone montage.

Ginger Snaps and Ginger Snaps: Unleashed




Ginger Snaps: Unleashed another werewolf movie, is the sequel to Ginger Snaps, part of the recent trend of what I call "alternative horror", horror flicks featuring the alternative aesthetic, made outside the Hollywood system and often involving twisted takes on traditional horror material; a subgenre that was kicked off by the success of The Blair Witch Project. These films, part Hammer Horror, part Heathers play equally well in the arthouse and the drive-in.

Without spoiling too much, the original, Ginger Snaps, was kind of like a modern take on the camp classic I Was A Teenage Werewolf, but instead of serving up a cheesy Teen Wolf comedy romp, Ginger Snaps went straight for the jugular (pardon the pun), dealing head on with the concept of lycanthropy as a metaphor for the changes of puberty. But, here the Michael Landon role is a teenaged girl named Ginger, which reinforces the metaphor as she and her younger sister struggle to deal with the changes wrought on their relationship by the onset of Ginger's "curse". And the thrills just pile up as teen angst gives way to adult horror.

Ginger Snaps: Unleashed picks up where the first movie left off. Ginger's sister Brigitte, now infected, struggles daily to keep from being overwhelmed by the curse. Eventually her strange peccadilloes land her in a rehab clinic where she is forced to deal with a host of unseemly characters, including Tyler, a perverted intern and a hostile ward of the hospital called Ghost. To make matters worse, Brigitte is being pursued by another werewolf, which makes her and everyone in the hospital a sitting duck. With the help of Ghost, Brigitte plans to escape to the wilderness, and an inevitable showdown with the beast out there, as well as the beast inside herself.

Sequels, almost by definition, can't be as groundbreaking as their predecessors, but Ginger Snaps: Unleashed covers enough new territory to make it a worthy successor, and a solid standalone feature. The increased production values may in fact put it in the rare category of sequels that outdo their originals. Despite Hollywood's slick silver bullets like Underworld, Canada's Ginger Snaps series alongside the recent UK film Dog Soldiers proves that the werewolf mythos are alive and well in the 21st Century.

The Man Behind the Camera

The Last Horror Movie



In past reviews I’ve mentioned the attempt to bring Cinema Verité style camera work to dramatic features. This technique seems particularly well suited for the horror genre, as mentioned in the review for [REC] (q.v.)

If you were raised on very steady, tripod shot films, you may be in the group that finds extensive handheld camerawork, tedious and nausea inducing; if on the other hand you like the style for the sense of immediacy it brings, The Last Horror Movie may be worth searching out.

Its several years old, so it deserves scads of credit for prefiguring the recent trend of documentary style horror films, but the last seven years have brought many changes, so it’s a tad dated already – videotape still predominates, and the local video stores were still a dominant force.

As you can probably guess from the title, The Last Horror Movie like 8mm, is metafiction. But it’s no slick lifeless 35mm Hollywood thriller about 8mm snuff films. This UK shot-on-video piece puts you in the action as you accompany a serial killer making the rounds. The killer is a wedding videographer who, with his assistant, travels around killing people and videotaping it.

Comparisons to Man Bites Dog are inevitable, but this film forgoes the black humor in favor of a more “real” and menacing feel. The killer, probably not accidentally, bears more than a passing resemblance to Ted Bundy. Good looking, charming, and able to go from zero to psychopath almost instantly. In that respect, it reminded me a little of American Psycho, but again, less slick.

Certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but then no movie featuring a serial killer is.

Peeping Tom




If you like The Last Horror Movie, you might want to go back even further to seek out another rare treasure. Peeping Tom might actually have been the inspiration for The Last Horror Movie. This movie deals with a disturbed young photographer/filmmaker who kills models and actresses in London and captures it on film in a sort of 1960s update of Jack the Ripper.

This film was clearly ahead of it’s time. Made in the late 1950s and released in 1960, it resembles the 70s films of a decade and a half later more than anything else from the time. In fact at the time, its dispassionate, unflinching look at the psyche of a serial killer was so scandalous that it nearly ended director Michael Powell’s career. Powell was relegated to working on TV jobs and foreign films until cinema caught up with him 15 years later, when he was venerated and vindicated by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.

Quarantine - Foreign Fimmaking Sanitized For Your Protection

Quarantine

Here we go again – another, pointless shot-for-shot remake. But as far as pointless shot-for-shot Hollywood remakes go, this has got to be one of the most pointless so far given the film it’s remaking, [REC], wasn’t even a year old when they rushed this one out.

Really the only difference I can see between this film and [REC] is that Quarantine is in English, and set in Los Angeles. Other than that, the films are so close that even in an American context, the film has been Spanish-ized (e.g. the Spanish style architecture of the apartment building setting, and even Latin-American characters like ‘Mrs. Espanoza’).

Aside from some of it’s edginess burnished off by slightly slicker Hollywood production values, it essentially has all the same weaknesses of [REC] (q.v.), but all the same strengths too. For example, by using the actual camcorder footage as the storytelling device, the film is able to use justifiable jump cuts to avoid covering transitions in time and place with walking and talking. This really helps ramp up the tension.

As usual with any good zombie film (really it’s a ghoul film, but that’s a discussion for another time), it's less about the zombie attack as it is about how the humans react to it.

Some things new to this version include having a vet actually in the building which allows for a better explanation of 'rabies', as well as the immediately dating bit of a rabbit ears TV. A couple minor points of interest to gore fans is a zombie dog in elevator scene and a zombie beat to death on camera – with the camera. But for every point in it’s favor (over the original) there’s one against it – for example, the TV host covering camera lens with hand and saying 'turn it off' – something that is just so out of character.

Overall, maybe it’s because I've seen it before, but Quarantine just doesn't seem as scary as [REC]. The zombie attacks aren't as sudden and surprising this time around, the lengths to which the government will go to cover things up isn’t as startlingly revealed here as in the original, and all the running up and down the stairs that worked in [REC], almost seems to border on British farce territory here.

If you’re a monolingual English speaker for whom subtitles will destroy any suspense, then by all means, see Quarantine. For everybody else – see [REC].

Rewind to [REC]

[REC]



With Zombieland and Paranormal Activity tearing up the box office, I thought it would be a good time to review a film that combines some of the best aspects of both; zombies and the faux documentary style.


[REC] (the symbol for ‘recording mode’ on a camcorder) a Spanish film released in 2007 has a two person documentary TV crew following a Barcelona Fire Department team on a “typical” night. The crew respond to a call in an apartment building, and get trapped inside amidst a zombie infestation.

The simple plot is one of the film’s greatest strengths. There really isn’t a lot of time wasted on subplots or melodrama. And while most of the techniques used in [REC] we’ve seen before; Blair Witch Project style hand held camera work, the ubiquitous green night vision we’ve seen in everything from The Silence of the Lambs to The Descent, not to mention heaven knows how many “ghost hunting” TV shows; but none of them together nearly as well as [REC].

Of course, just like The Ring/The Grudge, etc. there was the requisite watered down, big budget Hollywood version made, Quarantine, for the masses who refuse to see any foreign film, under any circumstances, ever. And, while the trend continues there will probably be more big budget Cloverfields and District 9s, but sometimes all it takes is a small crew who cut their teeth on documentary TV to make an focused faux documentary with the intensity of [REC].