In this book Richard Nowell challenges some of the dominant understandings of the slasher film, while providing a model for charting the rise and fall of a film cycle.
Nowell argues that Carol J Clover's position in Men, Women and Chainsaws is less satisfactory than Vera Dika's. This is becase Clover's reading is based upon selective readings of a comparatively small sample and somewhat inchoate films.
Contra Clover, Nowell contends that slasher films had a broader audience than young males, with filmmakers and advertising targetting both genders.
To help show this Nowell performs a content analysis of key texts such Halloween and Friday the 13th. In addition to simply counting the number of deaths, he charts various features – the victim's gender, whether there was a scene of stalking, whether the death was protracted, etc.
Nowell also suggests that the influence of Halloween in the development of the slasher film was less than that of Friday the 13th. The difference between the two films stems from how they were distributed: Halloween was distributed independently, Friday the 13th by major studios, Paramount in the US and Warners internatiolly. The advantages of being distributed by a major were their ability to strike a greater number of prints to distribute to theatres and a larger advertising budget – indeed with many slashers the amount of money spent on advertising by the studio would outweigh the cost of film to make and acquire.
While selling a film to a major studio as a negative pickup meant backers would get a return on their investment in short order, it also meant that profits went to the studio.
This raises questions in relation to the different contexts of other national cinemas. In the case of Italy, for instance, there would appear to have been a similar situation in terms of production. For, as Christopher Wagstaff indicates, the industry was based around a large number of small scale producers, with production companies sometimes being established to make a single film or relying on the profits from one film to finance the next. What was different, however, was the relative absence of anything comparable to the Hollywood studio system – this despite the efforts of Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti.
The most important aspect of Nowell's study is, however, his emphasis upon the film cycle. A film cycle starts and ends when production of a particular film type – slasher, western, animal comedy, etc. – rises above what Nowell terms “base level”. Here we might consider the numbers of spaghetti westerns made in 1964 compared to 1965, or the number of gialli made in 1969 compared to 1970.
Nowell's model of the film cycle draws upon the American west for its terminology and conceptualisation. Simultaneously, however, he also emphasises the disproportionate importance of Canadian productions to the slasher cycle.
The first of Nowell's concepts is the “pioneer production”, exemplified by the (Canadian) Black Christmas. The film, however, was not particularly successful commercially and so failed to provide the “trailblazer hit” required to inaugurate a cycle. Halloween, a “prospector production” was a trailblazer hit, albeit one whose impact was reduced on account of its independent release. Friday the 13th was a “prospector production” and the wake of imitators following in its wake were “carpentbagger cash-ins”. This increase in base level production was unsustainable, resulting in the end of the cycle.
Applying these idea to the giallo we might consider Blood and Black Lace as a pioneer production which failed to become a trailblazing hit. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage provided the trailblazer hit, with subsequent films with animals in their titles (The Bloodstained Butterfly, Lizard in a Woman's Skin etc.) prospector productions. The era of carpetbagger productions appeas to coincide with the rise of the poliziotto in 1973-75. Here we might consider the emergence of hybrid thriller/cop films like like What Have You Done to Your Daughters and Suspicious Death of a Minor, with their professional rather than amateur detectives. Another indicator of the shift is the work of Umberto Lenzi, with his shift from the thriller to the crime film, and the presumably poor box-office of Eyeball (another animal referencing title in the original Italian – Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro).
Tuesday, 18 October 2016
Friday, 24 June 2016
A Question
Are there any filmmaker/critic books where there is a real dialogue between them, one that sees the critic and the filmmaker go at one another in a dialogical or dialectic way?
This is prompted by reading Ebert on Scorsese and wanting to see Ebert ask Scorsese questions about Taxi Driver such as:
The Travis/Betsy date at a porn film: Is the context that of porno chic or afterwards? When Schrader wrote the script was it porno chic, so not so strange for a guy to take a gal to a hardcore film, with the potential for both to show their sophistication, but by the time the film was released had it been rewritten with a post-'Throat Cut' hardcore ghettoisation?
Does Scorsese know when the porn film within the film, Language of Love, played in 42nd Street grindhouses and the version it screened in? Did he ever go see it? Did he choose it as the diegetic porn text and the images we see and hear with any particular motivation/reference?
How did Schrader feel about Scorsese’s deciding to have Travis not only kill guys who are black? (Which spirals into another set of questions.)
Did Scorsese ever think of doing a fuck you to the MPAA etc. and not toning down the colour of the blood in the final showdown?
Was Romero a truer heir to Powell for not compromising with the MPAA on Dawn of the Dead?
Something with Godard in French maybe? Or Pasolini in Italian?
This is prompted by reading Ebert on Scorsese and wanting to see Ebert ask Scorsese questions about Taxi Driver such as:
The Travis/Betsy date at a porn film: Is the context that of porno chic or afterwards? When Schrader wrote the script was it porno chic, so not so strange for a guy to take a gal to a hardcore film, with the potential for both to show their sophistication, but by the time the film was released had it been rewritten with a post-'Throat Cut' hardcore ghettoisation?
Does Scorsese know when the porn film within the film, Language of Love, played in 42nd Street grindhouses and the version it screened in? Did he ever go see it? Did he choose it as the diegetic porn text and the images we see and hear with any particular motivation/reference?
How did Schrader feel about Scorsese’s deciding to have Travis not only kill guys who are black? (Which spirals into another set of questions.)
Did Scorsese ever think of doing a fuck you to the MPAA etc. and not toning down the colour of the blood in the final showdown?
Was Romero a truer heir to Powell for not compromising with the MPAA on Dawn of the Dead?
Something with Godard in French maybe? Or Pasolini in Italian?
Tuesday, 21 June 2016
Golgo 13
This live-action adaptation of Takao Saito’s manga stars Ken Takakura as the titular assassin -- his pseudonym refers to Golgotha and Judas Iscariot’s role as the 13th man, the betrayer -- who is hired to identify and kill crime boss Max Boa.
Golgo's employer knows that Boa’s base of operations is Iran and has provided Golgo with photographs of several men bearing Boa’s name along with a somewhat implausible cover story of being on his honeymoon with his Iranian wife. But otherwise Boa is about as mysterious as Golgo himself.
The Iranian aspect is where Golgo 13 gets interesting beyond its Japanese action-movie formula. For we have a Japanese lead and crew filming in pre-revolutionary Iran with a cast that is otherwise Iranian -- and it is all dubbed into Japanese.
The closest point of comparison I can think of is Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django, with its largely Japanese cast playing cowboys and speaking in phonetic English, except that here things are done without any obvious sense of parody or irony.
You’re not supposed to notice or bother when a car chase sees one vehicle, formerly containing four men, suddenly be empty when it crashes and explodes, nor that Golgo sticks out like a sore thumb as what seems to be the only East Asian man in the entirety of Iran, nor that the two hitmen brought in from France by one of Boa’s underlings to take him out look utterly un-French.
Instead it’s more a case of sit back and enjoy the unpretetentious does-what-it-says on the tin action, along with some impressive vistas that would not look out of place in a John Ford or Sergio Leone western, or the intrinsic documentary value of seeing then-up-to-the-minute images of westernising/modernising Iran inadvertently juxtaposed those that would become predominant a few years later.
Besides, Ken Takakura is the sort of guy -- think Toshiro Mifune through Clint Eastwood and back again -- who just has that effortless coolness to him...
Golgo's employer knows that Boa’s base of operations is Iran and has provided Golgo with photographs of several men bearing Boa’s name along with a somewhat implausible cover story of being on his honeymoon with his Iranian wife. But otherwise Boa is about as mysterious as Golgo himself.
The Iranian aspect is where Golgo 13 gets interesting beyond its Japanese action-movie formula. For we have a Japanese lead and crew filming in pre-revolutionary Iran with a cast that is otherwise Iranian -- and it is all dubbed into Japanese.
The closest point of comparison I can think of is Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django, with its largely Japanese cast playing cowboys and speaking in phonetic English, except that here things are done without any obvious sense of parody or irony.
You’re not supposed to notice or bother when a car chase sees one vehicle, formerly containing four men, suddenly be empty when it crashes and explodes, nor that Golgo sticks out like a sore thumb as what seems to be the only East Asian man in the entirety of Iran, nor that the two hitmen brought in from France by one of Boa’s underlings to take him out look utterly un-French.
Instead it’s more a case of sit back and enjoy the unpretetentious does-what-it-says on the tin action, along with some impressive vistas that would not look out of place in a John Ford or Sergio Leone western, or the intrinsic documentary value of seeing then-up-to-the-minute images of westernising/modernising Iran inadvertently juxtaposed those that would become predominant a few years later.
Besides, Ken Takakura is the sort of guy -- think Toshiro Mifune through Clint Eastwood and back again -- who just has that effortless coolness to him...
Macbeth Unhinged
Watching a film adaptation of Macbeth, or any similar canonical work of theatre or literature, is an intrinsically different viewing experience from the usual. Knowing what’s going to happen, more or less – the only omission I noted here was Birnam Wood coming to life – you find yourself devoting a greater proportion of your attention to the mise-en-scene, the performances, the use of sound, and so forth.
Scotsman Angus Macfadyen’s adaptation – in addition to directing he also plays the title role – relocates the play in time to the present day, as signalled by the likes of African-American actor Harry Lennix playing Banquo; guns co-existing with daggers; magazine covers presenting Lady Macbeth as a style icon; and, above all, the locations for much of the narrative being the interiors of black limousines – that of Macbeth’s has the personalised number plate Lady Mcb, a nice touch that shows the power dynamics of their relationship before we get into the familiar text.
This stylistic device means that Macfadyen makes extensive use of close-ups and shot-reverse-shot, closing the play in rather than opening it out. The confined interiors make one think that much of the time the film must have been constructed in the editing rather than in the camera, with the actors delivering their performances individually rather than playing off one another as they were recorded by multiple cameras.
This sense of the importance of the editors’ contributions is further enhanced by the frequent use of superimpositions. These, it is important to note, are not used in a particularly obvious or consistent way – it is not that the ghost Banquo appears to Macbeth as a superimposition, for instance, instead being rendered normally to him but invisible to his wife.
The film’s sense of place is more ambiguous. Exteriors were shot in Virginia USA, but whether they are supposed to be Scotland, New York, or wherever is difficult to say. Being grey – except for three brief moments, two being gunshots vaguely recalling Hitchcock’s Spellbound, the film is shot entirely in monochrome – flat and featureless, they have the characteristics of what Gilles Deleuze described as the any-space-whatever.
This impression is strengthened by the way Macfadyen tends to shoot the exteriors, one that contrasts with the aforementioned limousine scenes, through use of more theatre-style long shots and tableaux. Suffice to say that if the Virginia film board were hoping that this film would showcase their state as an attractive place to visit or film in – unless you wanted to make a Stalker or suchlike – they probably didn’t get their money’s worth.
In sum, an interesting experiment, but not the sort of adaptation you’d want to use in a high school English class.
Scotsman Angus Macfadyen’s adaptation – in addition to directing he also plays the title role – relocates the play in time to the present day, as signalled by the likes of African-American actor Harry Lennix playing Banquo; guns co-existing with daggers; magazine covers presenting Lady Macbeth as a style icon; and, above all, the locations for much of the narrative being the interiors of black limousines – that of Macbeth’s has the personalised number plate Lady Mcb, a nice touch that shows the power dynamics of their relationship before we get into the familiar text.
This stylistic device means that Macfadyen makes extensive use of close-ups and shot-reverse-shot, closing the play in rather than opening it out. The confined interiors make one think that much of the time the film must have been constructed in the editing rather than in the camera, with the actors delivering their performances individually rather than playing off one another as they were recorded by multiple cameras.
This sense of the importance of the editors’ contributions is further enhanced by the frequent use of superimpositions. These, it is important to note, are not used in a particularly obvious or consistent way – it is not that the ghost Banquo appears to Macbeth as a superimposition, for instance, instead being rendered normally to him but invisible to his wife.
The film’s sense of place is more ambiguous. Exteriors were shot in Virginia USA, but whether they are supposed to be Scotland, New York, or wherever is difficult to say. Being grey – except for three brief moments, two being gunshots vaguely recalling Hitchcock’s Spellbound, the film is shot entirely in monochrome – flat and featureless, they have the characteristics of what Gilles Deleuze described as the any-space-whatever.
This impression is strengthened by the way Macfadyen tends to shoot the exteriors, one that contrasts with the aforementioned limousine scenes, through use of more theatre-style long shots and tableaux. Suffice to say that if the Virginia film board were hoping that this film would showcase their state as an attractive place to visit or film in – unless you wanted to make a Stalker or suchlike – they probably didn’t get their money’s worth.
In sum, an interesting experiment, but not the sort of adaptation you’d want to use in a high school English class.
Tuesday, 3 May 2016
Comics / Comix / XXX
The Edinburgh International Film Festival is doing one of its retrospectives on the live action comic book adaptation. It is focusing upon the 1960s and 1970s. Diabolik and Baba Yaga will be shown, though unfortunately a Tarkan or Killing seems unlikely.
In relation to this I was amused to discover Erotik, a hardcore fumetti Diabolik rip-off cum (groan!) parody. Or Not Diabolik XXX, a Porn Parody, avant la lettre.
In relation to this I was amused to discover Erotik, a hardcore fumetti Diabolik rip-off cum (groan!) parody. Or Not Diabolik XXX, a Porn Parody, avant la lettre.
Thursday, 15 October 2015
The Camp on Blood Island
In the dying days of the Second World War the inmates in a Japanese prisoner of war camp learn that Japan has lost the war. This news is not a cause for jubilation, however, since the commander of the camp, certain to be executed for war crimes if Japan loses, will kill every prisoner, man, woman and child should he find out.
The strengths of Val Guest's The Camp on Blood Island (1958) are much the same as those of his other war is hell in the pacific entry Yesterday's Enemy (1959).
The director's quasi-documentary style is a positive, even if not as well realised as its successor due to an increasing focus upon action film elements later on.
So too, without reservation, are the sweaty atmosphere and tension that he conjures up, and the performances he elicits from a talented cast that includes Hammer stalwarts such as Andre Morell and Richard Wordsworth.
The writing nicely explores the ethical dilemmas facing those in command, both military and civilian, without didacticism or reducing these characters to mouthpieces.
This, however, also leads to one of the negatives, that the rank and file are again given less characterisation and attention – when six men are executed in reprisals for an escape all they are is a number, devoid of names and of individual identities.
Another flaw, at least for some, is likely to be the casting of actors of other ethnicities, such as the Anglo-English Marne Maitland and the white British Michael Ripper, as Japanese soldiers.
Here, however, I'd say it is important to consider the film as a product of its time and place and to recognise that, much like its companion piece, there is considerable thought-provoking ambiguity throughout.
So, for instance, Ripper's cameo role is one of a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, fated to die through no fault of his own.
Similarly, if the female prisoner who consorts with one of the soldiers is played by an East Asian actor, it is not that her character is set against the others by race, given that their numbers including other non-whites, rather by her placing of self above collective.
(As an aside, the film made me think about present-day debates around casting? Does being an actor and thus by definition playing people other than oneself render them irrelevant? Is the main issue an imbalance of power between majorities and minorities in who can play who? Is there a difference when the character being played is an actual historical figure or a religious one believed to be real?)
The strengths of Val Guest's The Camp on Blood Island (1958) are much the same as those of his other war is hell in the pacific entry Yesterday's Enemy (1959).
The director's quasi-documentary style is a positive, even if not as well realised as its successor due to an increasing focus upon action film elements later on.
So too, without reservation, are the sweaty atmosphere and tension that he conjures up, and the performances he elicits from a talented cast that includes Hammer stalwarts such as Andre Morell and Richard Wordsworth.
The writing nicely explores the ethical dilemmas facing those in command, both military and civilian, without didacticism or reducing these characters to mouthpieces.
This, however, also leads to one of the negatives, that the rank and file are again given less characterisation and attention – when six men are executed in reprisals for an escape all they are is a number, devoid of names and of individual identities.
Another flaw, at least for some, is likely to be the casting of actors of other ethnicities, such as the Anglo-English Marne Maitland and the white British Michael Ripper, as Japanese soldiers.
Here, however, I'd say it is important to consider the film as a product of its time and place and to recognise that, much like its companion piece, there is considerable thought-provoking ambiguity throughout.
So, for instance, Ripper's cameo role is one of a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, fated to die through no fault of his own.
Similarly, if the female prisoner who consorts with one of the soldiers is played by an East Asian actor, it is not that her character is set against the others by race, given that their numbers including other non-whites, rather by her placing of self above collective.
(As an aside, the film made me think about present-day debates around casting? Does being an actor and thus by definition playing people other than oneself render them irrelevant? Is the main issue an imbalance of power between majorities and minorities in who can play who? Is there a difference when the character being played is an actual historical figure or a religious one believed to be real?)
Wednesday, 14 October 2015
Dracula and Son
Dracula and his son Ferdinand are forced to flee Transylvania after the communists come to power and lay claim to their castle. Fleeing to the west they are separated, Dracula winding up in London and Ferdinand in Paris. They are then reuinited when Dracula goes to Paris to work on a film. It is, of course, a horror film, its star having established himself as an actor whose gimmick, as far as the public are concerned, is that he believes himself to be a vampire. Initially father and son are happy to be reunited, but then come into conflict over a woman who just happens to be the spitting image of one of Dracula's brides – the one who was Ferdinand's mother!
As is well known, Christopher Lee was reluctant to reprise his career-making role as Dracula (1958) for Hammer, apparently fearing that he could become typecast in the role as the previous generation's Dracula, Bela Lugosi, had been.
What is less well known is that Lee quite happily traded upon his star persona in Italian productions such as the spoof Hard Times for Vampires (1959) and the Carmilla adaptation Crypt of the Vampire (1964) before his eventual return to Hammer and Dracula for Dracula Prince of Darkness (1965).
As is well known, Lee thereafter reprised the role for Hammer, but with increasing unhappiness at the conditions under which he was working. Eventually he refused to re-appear as the character following The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), thus compelling forcing the studio to find another actor to play the role in The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974).
What is less well known is that he again played Dracula - here.
Some of Dracula and Son's gags recall earlier horror comedies, as with some invisible in the mirror scenes reminiscent of Dance of the Vampires (1968), along with the deployment of a hammer and sickle as a crucifix in the manner of The She Beast (1966) during the Blood for Dracula (1974) recalling eviction scene.
These are, however, offset by the way in which the central self-referential conceit in turn prefigures Shadow of the Vampire (1999) by a good quarter century. (A vampire pretending to be a human pretending to be a vampire – how avant-garde – as Interview with the Vampire's Claudia put it.)
In addition plenty of further laughs come from the way the film-makers explore the vampires' plight in the modern world, as with Ferdinand's needing to find a job where he is on a constant night shift and general reluctance to feed upon living human victims resulting in frequent stomach rumbling and failed attempts at raiding a hospital blood bank, working at a slaughterhouse and suchlike.
Lee's playing with his image is also a lot of fun, as is the all-in oedipal conflict between the two Draculas, while the early scenes set a couple of hundred years back prove surprisingly evocative as straight gothic romance, replete with fearful coach drivers, a creepy castle and the like.
Probably not Black Park, but certainly evocative of it.
Lee does his thing
Fans of French arthouse fare may care to note that Fat Girl director Catherine Breillat and her sister Marie Helene appear as the Draculas' love interests, making one wish that they had worked with Jean Rollin in the manner of the Catherine and Pony Castel, to further round out that familiar art/trash circuit.
I watched Dracula and Son, whose dialogue is a mixture of English, French and Romanian, in a German edition. This in itself was of interest when it came to the credits, in that these credited not only the performers but also their German dubbing voices.
Recommended.
As is well known, Christopher Lee was reluctant to reprise his career-making role as Dracula (1958) for Hammer, apparently fearing that he could become typecast in the role as the previous generation's Dracula, Bela Lugosi, had been.
What is less well known is that Lee quite happily traded upon his star persona in Italian productions such as the spoof Hard Times for Vampires (1959) and the Carmilla adaptation Crypt of the Vampire (1964) before his eventual return to Hammer and Dracula for Dracula Prince of Darkness (1965).
As is well known, Lee thereafter reprised the role for Hammer, but with increasing unhappiness at the conditions under which he was working. Eventually he refused to re-appear as the character following The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), thus compelling forcing the studio to find another actor to play the role in The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974).
What is less well known is that he again played Dracula - here.
Some of Dracula and Son's gags recall earlier horror comedies, as with some invisible in the mirror scenes reminiscent of Dance of the Vampires (1968), along with the deployment of a hammer and sickle as a crucifix in the manner of The She Beast (1966) during the Blood for Dracula (1974) recalling eviction scene.
These are, however, offset by the way in which the central self-referential conceit in turn prefigures Shadow of the Vampire (1999) by a good quarter century. (A vampire pretending to be a human pretending to be a vampire – how avant-garde – as Interview with the Vampire's Claudia put it.)
In addition plenty of further laughs come from the way the film-makers explore the vampires' plight in the modern world, as with Ferdinand's needing to find a job where he is on a constant night shift and general reluctance to feed upon living human victims resulting in frequent stomach rumbling and failed attempts at raiding a hospital blood bank, working at a slaughterhouse and suchlike.
Lee's playing with his image is also a lot of fun, as is the all-in oedipal conflict between the two Draculas, while the early scenes set a couple of hundred years back prove surprisingly evocative as straight gothic romance, replete with fearful coach drivers, a creepy castle and the like.
Probably not Black Park, but certainly evocative of it.
Lee does his thing
Fans of French arthouse fare may care to note that Fat Girl director Catherine Breillat and her sister Marie Helene appear as the Draculas' love interests, making one wish that they had worked with Jean Rollin in the manner of the Catherine and Pony Castel, to further round out that familiar art/trash circuit.
I watched Dracula and Son, whose dialogue is a mixture of English, French and Romanian, in a German edition. This in itself was of interest when it came to the credits, in that these credited not only the performers but also their German dubbing voices.
Recommended.
Sunday, 5 July 2015
Chuck Norris versus Communism
This HBO documentary, presented via Brett Ratner, presents an account of the distinctive video culture that emerged in Romania in the final years of the Ceacescu regime via a combination of interviews and reconstructions with both ordinary people and key figures in the samizdat video scene.
Up until the mid-1980s Romanian audiences had little access to western media. What was available was heavily censored by the authorities, sometimes for reasons that made sense only to them. One reconstruction, for example, presents the screening of a breakfast scene from a Hollywood film. The scene is cut because the amount of food on the table was in excess of what would be found in a comparable Romanian scenario and painted communism in a negative light vis a vis capitalism.
The VCR – imported and costing about the same as a car – changed this as a clandestine network of dubbing, duping, distributing and front room home screenings developed. Sometimes the multiple-generation copy would be so bad that viewers had to rely upon the dubbing track to tell what was going on, while the threat of a visit from the authorities was ever-present.
The main weaknesses of the documentary are the over-use of reconstructions and some failures of explanation. For instance, was not clear how everybody of a certain age seemed to know the name of one of the most prolific video dubbers, Irina Nistor, when the authorities apparently did not, all the more so since in her day job she worked for the regime.
I would also like to have had a bit more contextualisation and comparison. We see that the Romanian dubbing culture was one where an individual, male or female, would do all of the voices, providing a running translation of the English dialogue, but are not told whether this was standard practice. We also see that swear words would be replaced – which makes for amusing viewing when the film in question is De Palma’s Scarface – but are not told if this mirrored official practice and/or was a means of attempting to make the films family-friendly.
These things said, Chuck Norris versus Communism is worth watching for anyone with an interest in global video cultures. One parallel with the British case, for example, is how the act of banning something – Hollywood product there, the video nasties here – serves only to make it that more appealing.
Up until the mid-1980s Romanian audiences had little access to western media. What was available was heavily censored by the authorities, sometimes for reasons that made sense only to them. One reconstruction, for example, presents the screening of a breakfast scene from a Hollywood film. The scene is cut because the amount of food on the table was in excess of what would be found in a comparable Romanian scenario and painted communism in a negative light vis a vis capitalism.
The VCR – imported and costing about the same as a car – changed this as a clandestine network of dubbing, duping, distributing and front room home screenings developed. Sometimes the multiple-generation copy would be so bad that viewers had to rely upon the dubbing track to tell what was going on, while the threat of a visit from the authorities was ever-present.
The main weaknesses of the documentary are the over-use of reconstructions and some failures of explanation. For instance, was not clear how everybody of a certain age seemed to know the name of one of the most prolific video dubbers, Irina Nistor, when the authorities apparently did not, all the more so since in her day job she worked for the regime.
I would also like to have had a bit more contextualisation and comparison. We see that the Romanian dubbing culture was one where an individual, male or female, would do all of the voices, providing a running translation of the English dialogue, but are not told whether this was standard practice. We also see that swear words would be replaced – which makes for amusing viewing when the film in question is De Palma’s Scarface – but are not told if this mirrored official practice and/or was a means of attempting to make the films family-friendly.
These things said, Chuck Norris versus Communism is worth watching for anyone with an interest in global video cultures. One parallel with the British case, for example, is how the act of banning something – Hollywood product there, the video nasties here – serves only to make it that more appealing.
Wednesday, 24 June 2015
That Sugar Film
It’s impossible to watch That Sugar Film and not think of Supersize Me as an obvious progenitor and reference point.
Both are documentaries that see their director subject himself to a different diet for a period in order to chart the effects this has on his physical and emotional well being.
This said, there are sufficient differences between the two films to allow for the existence of both. In Supersize Me Morgan Spurlock took it upon himself to eat only at McDonalds and to always take the Supersize option if it were offered to him. As such he was taking in a lot more calories than he had under his pre-film diet. Here Damon Gameau, who had previously switched to a diet free from added and processed sugars, takes it upon himself to consume the same quantity of these as the average Australian. As such he takes in the same amount of calories as he had before, but just shifts the proportions of fats and sugars in particular.
If neither man’s new diet is one that the nutritional and other experts they respectively interview would recommend, Gameau’s is arguably more in line with dominant discourses. The film’s contention is that due to the debate over whether sugar or fat in the diet is (more) harmful having been won by the former lobby fats were removed from processed foods and replaced with sugars.
This leads on to another couple of points of differentiation. That Sugar Film goes into the science of food a bit more than Supersize Me, and increasingly brings in other voices besides the filmmaker’s.
So, for instance, Gameau visits an aboriginal community which began with its inhabitants following a traditional diet and then saw the introduction of western processed foods; as he community was alcohol-free changes in morbidity could not be explained away using that framework.
The science aspects are presented, like the rest of the film, in a light, breezy and undeniably slick way. This all keeps the film accessible, but also possibly a touch light on fibre.
Both are documentaries that see their director subject himself to a different diet for a period in order to chart the effects this has on his physical and emotional well being.
This said, there are sufficient differences between the two films to allow for the existence of both. In Supersize Me Morgan Spurlock took it upon himself to eat only at McDonalds and to always take the Supersize option if it were offered to him. As such he was taking in a lot more calories than he had under his pre-film diet. Here Damon Gameau, who had previously switched to a diet free from added and processed sugars, takes it upon himself to consume the same quantity of these as the average Australian. As such he takes in the same amount of calories as he had before, but just shifts the proportions of fats and sugars in particular.
If neither man’s new diet is one that the nutritional and other experts they respectively interview would recommend, Gameau’s is arguably more in line with dominant discourses. The film’s contention is that due to the debate over whether sugar or fat in the diet is (more) harmful having been won by the former lobby fats were removed from processed foods and replaced with sugars.
This leads on to another couple of points of differentiation. That Sugar Film goes into the science of food a bit more than Supersize Me, and increasingly brings in other voices besides the filmmaker’s.
So, for instance, Gameau visits an aboriginal community which began with its inhabitants following a traditional diet and then saw the introduction of western processed foods; as he community was alcohol-free changes in morbidity could not be explained away using that framework.
The science aspects are presented, like the rest of the film, in a light, breezy and undeniably slick way. This all keeps the film accessible, but also possibly a touch light on fibre.
Makeup Room
Makeup Room presents a classical unity of time, space and action, of one day behind the scenes on the shooting of a Japanese adult video (JAV).
The backstage aspect is important: though there are a number of (female) AV performers playing the roles of AV performers Makeup Room is not itself an AV. All of the filming of the sex scenes occurs off screen such that what’s said and heard, including discussions of rape and incest scenes, is more pornographic than what is seen, which amount to a few, naturalistic, flashes of breasts and buttocks.
Most of the comedy is based around the premise that anything which can go wrong will. If it is necessarily exaggerated it also comes across as having groundings in the experiences of the filmmakers.
So, for example, the performer cast in the Lolita/schoolgirl role did not anticipate having so many lines to learn for the part. She and the performer cast as the mother, who has considerably fewer lines, have been made up and costumed for their roles when the matter of the schoolgirl’s having a tattoo comes up. It turns out to be a back-piece impossible to conceal with makeup, such that the performers have to swap roles, appearances and costumes – the last of which, of course, don’t fit...
Or then there’s one performer having unknowingly been cast for a ‘lesbian’ scene and being reluctant to have her long fingernails cut seeing as she’s just spent several thousand Yen having them done. Her partner for the scene is correspondingly reluctant to be fingered by those nails...
The performers and, through this, the director’s handling impress.
Even if the film is maybe slightly over-long you also feel that this is deliberate, thought and worked through. A powerful dramatic scene between the makeup artist and one of the AV performers felt like a natural point of climax, but is followed afterwards by an anticlimactic coda as the community that has come together over the course of the day dissolves itself. Just another day at the orifice for most of those involved.
The backstage aspect is important: though there are a number of (female) AV performers playing the roles of AV performers Makeup Room is not itself an AV. All of the filming of the sex scenes occurs off screen such that what’s said and heard, including discussions of rape and incest scenes, is more pornographic than what is seen, which amount to a few, naturalistic, flashes of breasts and buttocks.
Most of the comedy is based around the premise that anything which can go wrong will. If it is necessarily exaggerated it also comes across as having groundings in the experiences of the filmmakers.
So, for example, the performer cast in the Lolita/schoolgirl role did not anticipate having so many lines to learn for the part. She and the performer cast as the mother, who has considerably fewer lines, have been made up and costumed for their roles when the matter of the schoolgirl’s having a tattoo comes up. It turns out to be a back-piece impossible to conceal with makeup, such that the performers have to swap roles, appearances and costumes – the last of which, of course, don’t fit...
Or then there’s one performer having unknowingly been cast for a ‘lesbian’ scene and being reluctant to have her long fingernails cut seeing as she’s just spent several thousand Yen having them done. Her partner for the scene is correspondingly reluctant to be fingered by those nails...
The performers and, through this, the director’s handling impress.
Even if the film is maybe slightly over-long you also feel that this is deliberate, thought and worked through. A powerful dramatic scene between the makeup artist and one of the AV performers felt like a natural point of climax, but is followed afterwards by an anticlimactic coda as the community that has come together over the course of the day dissolves itself. Just another day at the orifice for most of those involved.
Friday, 19 June 2015
Future Shock! The Story of 2000 AD
No film or book should ever be described as the story or history of its subject, whether as a title or a subtitle. There is not The Story of Film, nor The Story of 2000 AD. Rather there are stories, histories, accounts, necessarily incomplete and intentionally or unintentionally biased.
One demonstration of this here is the absence of Alan Moore as one of the interviewees. His presence is felt, perhaps as a structuring absence, through comments from others, including his daughter Leah Moore and Neil Gaiman, on The Ballad of Halo Jones in particular.
Another, which makes Moore’s absent presence that bit more surprising, is that the filmmakers provide others associated with the comic plenty of scope to be critical of others, of one another and of themselves.
This, crucially, is in line with the anti-authoritarian mindset typical (or presented as such) of 2000 AD’s writers and artists. An irony here is that 2000 AD is shown as coming from the banning of its predecessor Action, whose mistake was to present its anti-authoritarianism in a contemporary rather than science fiction/fantasy guise. (Here I’d hope that in an extended DVD version Martin Barker was included amongst the academic commentators and that Battle's Charley’s War was mentioned.)
The most important question for 2000 AD’s creatives is presented as one of recognition. For whatever reasons -- likely worthy of a documentary in their own right -- most of those working in the comics industry were historically not acknowledged as the authors or given the rights according with this designation.
2000AD’s crediting of its creatives proved a triple-edged sword. For the creatives it meant the ability to move onwards and upwards to the USA, Marvel and DC if they wanted to. For the comic it meant talent increasingly using it as a stepping stone towards greater audiences and remuneration. For comics, especially in the US, it meant a greater breadth. (The influence of Japanese comics on 2000 AD, and/or vice-versa, if there are such, are not mentioned.)
The critical theme, and self-criticism, re-emerge. (In the spirit of self-criticism I don’t know if there is a chibi Dredd, say, but would like to.) One of 2000AD’s, and the comics industry’s failings, is given as the masculine focus. Halo Jones excepted the other key characters from the early days discussed -- Judge Dredd, Nemesis the Warlock, Rogue Trooper, Johnny Alpha -- are male.
So too, however, do the limits of the critique: the 1995 Judge Dredd film is bad, the 2012 film good. Rebellion Developments, the current owners of the brand, are good.
Overall, though, a good documentary -- if you were not around in 2000 AD’s first decade you’ll likely learn something and, if like me, you weren’t around for much after that, you’ll likely also do so.
One demonstration of this here is the absence of Alan Moore as one of the interviewees. His presence is felt, perhaps as a structuring absence, through comments from others, including his daughter Leah Moore and Neil Gaiman, on The Ballad of Halo Jones in particular.
Another, which makes Moore’s absent presence that bit more surprising, is that the filmmakers provide others associated with the comic plenty of scope to be critical of others, of one another and of themselves.
This, crucially, is in line with the anti-authoritarian mindset typical (or presented as such) of 2000 AD’s writers and artists. An irony here is that 2000 AD is shown as coming from the banning of its predecessor Action, whose mistake was to present its anti-authoritarianism in a contemporary rather than science fiction/fantasy guise. (Here I’d hope that in an extended DVD version Martin Barker was included amongst the academic commentators and that Battle's Charley’s War was mentioned.)
The most important question for 2000 AD’s creatives is presented as one of recognition. For whatever reasons -- likely worthy of a documentary in their own right -- most of those working in the comics industry were historically not acknowledged as the authors or given the rights according with this designation.
2000AD’s crediting of its creatives proved a triple-edged sword. For the creatives it meant the ability to move onwards and upwards to the USA, Marvel and DC if they wanted to. For the comic it meant talent increasingly using it as a stepping stone towards greater audiences and remuneration. For comics, especially in the US, it meant a greater breadth. (The influence of Japanese comics on 2000 AD, and/or vice-versa, if there are such, are not mentioned.)
The critical theme, and self-criticism, re-emerge. (In the spirit of self-criticism I don’t know if there is a chibi Dredd, say, but would like to.) One of 2000AD’s, and the comics industry’s failings, is given as the masculine focus. Halo Jones excepted the other key characters from the early days discussed -- Judge Dredd, Nemesis the Warlock, Rogue Trooper, Johnny Alpha -- are male.
So too, however, do the limits of the critique: the 1995 Judge Dredd film is bad, the 2012 film good. Rebellion Developments, the current owners of the brand, are good.
Overall, though, a good documentary -- if you were not around in 2000 AD’s first decade you’ll likely learn something and, if like me, you weren’t around for much after that, you’ll likely also do so.
Thursday, 18 June 2015
Remake, Remix, Rip-Off
This German documentary on Turkish popular cinema impresses in many ways, from the number of behind and before the camera personnel interviewed and allowed to speak for themselves by the self-effacing filmmakers in this age of the celebrity documentarian; the insightful remarks of well-selected academics, critics and fans; the wider context given and, above all, the number of films cited and expertly edited together.
The narrative begins with a number of luminaries from the Turkish popular cinema of the 1960s through 1980s commenting upon the finite number of plots that exist. They disagree on the exact number but together set up the titular three-R’s approach as inevitable and universal. There’s nothing new under the sun, indeed, though together those three R’s lead to others -- recombination, reinterpretation, reinvigoration, reflexivity -- when considered through an industry making 300 films a year on extremely tight schedules and low budgets.
What does it mean to watch a Turkish version of The Exorcist, Seytan, for instance, when the religious context is that of Islam rather than Christianity? Or Dracula in Istanbul, when there is the historical context of the Ottoman Empire and the Romanian Vlad Dracul? Or a superhero romp in which Spiderman, albeit in a green and purple costume, is a sadistic killer? Clearly in each case it’s going to be a very different experience from what the viewer is used to.
This said, there are plenty of reference points outside the hegemonic frameworks of Hollywood popular cinema and European/World art cinemas, with Bollywood, Italy, and Hong Kong being three that immediately come to mind.
The elements that suggest themselves, in varying quantities, from these reference points include the importance of the family film, of melodrama, and of pleasing the audience, and the unimportance of elite critics and copyright.
The discussions of the material realities of film-making in Turkey even into the 1970s are fascinating. Filmmakers did not have daily rushes and would instead only see what had been filmed after shooting had concluded. Film stock was in short supply, often only allowing for a one shot/take approach. If a filmmaker was supplied with 30 reels for each of five films, he might well opt to use 25 reels to enable him to make six films. If stock was bought on the black market it was liable to have different chemical characteristics, making colour matching an unpredictable business. Cinematographers rarely had filters to compensate for these vagaries and might improvise by using coloured gels derived from sweets -- which would then tend to melt under the heat from the lights.
In sum, improvisation was the name of the game with the real triumph that of actually being able to get films made full stop. Or, rather, not just to get films made, but also made without regular fatalities when untrained stars were generally performing their own stunts.
Though both a great introduction to Turkish popular cinema and a valuable guide for future viewing for those who’ve already seen some of the better known examples, such as Turkish Star Wars/Rambo/Star Trek/Wizard of Oz, there were a few niggles.
The dates given occasionally seemed off. For example there are clips from what is identified as a version of Dillinger, credited as 1971. The clips are also used an illustration of another important aspect of the Turkish approach, namely the re-use of existing scores, in this case that for The Godfather. However the Godfather wasn’t released until 1972 and John Milius’s Dillinger until 1973.
The discussion of how the political situation impacted Turkish filmmakers was a bit confusing. Though this could well be a consequence of the 1960s through early 1980s seeing a series of military coups and re-esablishments of civilian government, beginning this part of the narrative with the 1980 coup probably didn’t help.
Still, any film that can supply you with the frisson of Enter the Dragon’s John Saxon being mistaken for Kriminal’s Glenn Saxson, only for the interviewee to correct himself and the filmmakers happily including this, cannot but be considered a must see, if you know what I mean...
The narrative begins with a number of luminaries from the Turkish popular cinema of the 1960s through 1980s commenting upon the finite number of plots that exist. They disagree on the exact number but together set up the titular three-R’s approach as inevitable and universal. There’s nothing new under the sun, indeed, though together those three R’s lead to others -- recombination, reinterpretation, reinvigoration, reflexivity -- when considered through an industry making 300 films a year on extremely tight schedules and low budgets.
What does it mean to watch a Turkish version of The Exorcist, Seytan, for instance, when the religious context is that of Islam rather than Christianity? Or Dracula in Istanbul, when there is the historical context of the Ottoman Empire and the Romanian Vlad Dracul? Or a superhero romp in which Spiderman, albeit in a green and purple costume, is a sadistic killer? Clearly in each case it’s going to be a very different experience from what the viewer is used to.
This said, there are plenty of reference points outside the hegemonic frameworks of Hollywood popular cinema and European/World art cinemas, with Bollywood, Italy, and Hong Kong being three that immediately come to mind.
The elements that suggest themselves, in varying quantities, from these reference points include the importance of the family film, of melodrama, and of pleasing the audience, and the unimportance of elite critics and copyright.
The discussions of the material realities of film-making in Turkey even into the 1970s are fascinating. Filmmakers did not have daily rushes and would instead only see what had been filmed after shooting had concluded. Film stock was in short supply, often only allowing for a one shot/take approach. If a filmmaker was supplied with 30 reels for each of five films, he might well opt to use 25 reels to enable him to make six films. If stock was bought on the black market it was liable to have different chemical characteristics, making colour matching an unpredictable business. Cinematographers rarely had filters to compensate for these vagaries and might improvise by using coloured gels derived from sweets -- which would then tend to melt under the heat from the lights.
In sum, improvisation was the name of the game with the real triumph that of actually being able to get films made full stop. Or, rather, not just to get films made, but also made without regular fatalities when untrained stars were generally performing their own stunts.
Though both a great introduction to Turkish popular cinema and a valuable guide for future viewing for those who’ve already seen some of the better known examples, such as Turkish Star Wars/Rambo/Star Trek/Wizard of Oz, there were a few niggles.
The dates given occasionally seemed off. For example there are clips from what is identified as a version of Dillinger, credited as 1971. The clips are also used an illustration of another important aspect of the Turkish approach, namely the re-use of existing scores, in this case that for The Godfather. However the Godfather wasn’t released until 1972 and John Milius’s Dillinger until 1973.
The discussion of how the political situation impacted Turkish filmmakers was a bit confusing. Though this could well be a consequence of the 1960s through early 1980s seeing a series of military coups and re-esablishments of civilian government, beginning this part of the narrative with the 1980 coup probably didn’t help.
Still, any film that can supply you with the frisson of Enter the Dragon’s John Saxon being mistaken for Kriminal’s Glenn Saxson, only for the interviewee to correct himself and the filmmakers happily including this, cannot but be considered a must see, if you know what I mean...
Friday, 2 January 2015
Hammer's Film Legacy
This 408 page book by Wayne Kinsey covers every Hammer production made between The Quatermass Xperiment in 1955 and To the Devil a Daughter in 1976 (including the is-it-or-isn’t-it Hammer The Shadow of the Cat) in chronological sequence.
There’s thus next to nothing on Exclusive/Hammer in the periods immediately before and after the Second World War, nor on the likes of Terence Fisher’s Three Sided Triangle and Stolen Face from the early 1950s, nor on the present-day Hammer revival.
Each of the 106 films included is approached in the same way: An image of its title card; listings of the crew and cast; distribution details; discussions of pre-production; casting; production; post-production and release.
For the most part Hammer’s Gothic Horrors are given the longest and most detailed write-ups, their television sitcom adaptations the least.
Besides reflecting the likely interests of the assumed reader, this is often a consequence of the back-and-forth between the studio and the British Board of Film Censors over script content at the pre-production stage. Mindful of costs, Hammer’s management could see no point in shooting material deemed too horrific or otherwise censorable.
Discussions of these negotiations were also one of the major strengths of the author’s previous volumes on Hammer’s Bray and Elstree periods. This, in turn, raises the question of how necessary Hammer’s Film Legacy is for those who already own the two now out-of-print collections. Similarly, some of the details of the contributions of those behind the camera and behind the scenes may overlap with Kinsey’s more recent book on Hammer’s Unsung Heroes.
For those owning neither of the Bray and Elstree volumes this is undoubtedly a worthwhile purchase considering the information it contains and the prices its predecessors now fetch. For those with them I would also argue that it is a worthwhile purchase, whether as an investment (as I write this the limited hardback edition of 500 must be nearly gone, mine being #412), for the material that hasn’t hitherto appeared elsewhere, or just to keep Kinsey and his publishers doing more of this stuff.
In case my comments appear too gushing I’ll finish with a negative. There are some places where I wondered if what the author wrote was what he meant. Early on, for example, he characterises the purchase and establishment of Bray Studios as a “false economy”. While Bray was certainly an economic decision I don’t believe it was a false one, i.e. a decision that cost more than it returned. Similarly a reference to “sort solace” rather than “sought solace” seems a malapropism.
Overall, however, well worth getting.
There’s thus next to nothing on Exclusive/Hammer in the periods immediately before and after the Second World War, nor on the likes of Terence Fisher’s Three Sided Triangle and Stolen Face from the early 1950s, nor on the present-day Hammer revival.
Each of the 106 films included is approached in the same way: An image of its title card; listings of the crew and cast; distribution details; discussions of pre-production; casting; production; post-production and release.
For the most part Hammer’s Gothic Horrors are given the longest and most detailed write-ups, their television sitcom adaptations the least.
Besides reflecting the likely interests of the assumed reader, this is often a consequence of the back-and-forth between the studio and the British Board of Film Censors over script content at the pre-production stage. Mindful of costs, Hammer’s management could see no point in shooting material deemed too horrific or otherwise censorable.
Discussions of these negotiations were also one of the major strengths of the author’s previous volumes on Hammer’s Bray and Elstree periods. This, in turn, raises the question of how necessary Hammer’s Film Legacy is for those who already own the two now out-of-print collections. Similarly, some of the details of the contributions of those behind the camera and behind the scenes may overlap with Kinsey’s more recent book on Hammer’s Unsung Heroes.
For those owning neither of the Bray and Elstree volumes this is undoubtedly a worthwhile purchase considering the information it contains and the prices its predecessors now fetch. For those with them I would also argue that it is a worthwhile purchase, whether as an investment (as I write this the limited hardback edition of 500 must be nearly gone, mine being #412), for the material that hasn’t hitherto appeared elsewhere, or just to keep Kinsey and his publishers doing more of this stuff.
In case my comments appear too gushing I’ll finish with a negative. There are some places where I wondered if what the author wrote was what he meant. Early on, for example, he characterises the purchase and establishment of Bray Studios as a “false economy”. While Bray was certainly an economic decision I don’t believe it was a false one, i.e. a decision that cost more than it returned. Similarly a reference to “sort solace” rather than “sought solace” seems a malapropism.
Overall, however, well worth getting.
Saturday, 20 September 2014
The Amicus Anthology
Compared to some of the subjects of author Bruce Hallenbeck's previous books, most notably The Hammer Vampire and The Hammer Frankenstein, The Amicus Anthology likely provided a greater challenge -- one that he thankfully rises to.
For the Hammer Frankenstein films, excepting the one-off spoof/parody Horror of Frankenstein, are unified by the constant presence of Peter Cushing in the title role and, barring The Evil of Frankenstein, Terence Fisher as director/auteur. The Amicus anthology films, by contrast, were directed by Freddie Francis and Roy Ward Baker in approximately equal numbers and had no recurring characters.
The history of Amicus is intrinsically linked to that of its rival. Milton Subotsky presented Hammer with a script for a Frankenstein film. Hammer's bosses didn't like it, but learned that Mary Shelley's characters were out of copyright and thus made their own treatment. This became the epochal Curse of Frankenstein.
Subotsky and other Amicus mainman Max Rosenberg responded to Hammer by employing Christopher Lee for the atmospheric City of the Dead. While not an official Amicus film its present-day setting would emerge as something differentiating Amicus and Hammer horror on aggregate.
There are, in my opinion, three key reasons why The Amicus Anthology works.
First, Hallenbeck provides historical context to the horror compendium film in his opening and closing chapters, which reference the likes of Waxworks, Dead of Night, and Creepshow.
Second, he contextualises Amicus's anthologies in relation to their single-story horrors, such as The Skull, and their non-horror films, such as the Amicus in all but name Dr Who adaptations with Cushing as (a) Who. (This Amicus/Who nexus is worth noting, with third and fourth Who's Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker both appearing in Amicus anthology horrors.)
Finally, Hallenbeck makes you think: Do you prefer to see Amicus's guest stars or Hammer's character actors? Do you prefer segments or wholes? Do you prefer humour as punchline or intermittently? Does a great segment outweigh a good film?
For the Hammer Frankenstein films, excepting the one-off spoof/parody Horror of Frankenstein, are unified by the constant presence of Peter Cushing in the title role and, barring The Evil of Frankenstein, Terence Fisher as director/auteur. The Amicus anthology films, by contrast, were directed by Freddie Francis and Roy Ward Baker in approximately equal numbers and had no recurring characters.
The history of Amicus is intrinsically linked to that of its rival. Milton Subotsky presented Hammer with a script for a Frankenstein film. Hammer's bosses didn't like it, but learned that Mary Shelley's characters were out of copyright and thus made their own treatment. This became the epochal Curse of Frankenstein.
Subotsky and other Amicus mainman Max Rosenberg responded to Hammer by employing Christopher Lee for the atmospheric City of the Dead. While not an official Amicus film its present-day setting would emerge as something differentiating Amicus and Hammer horror on aggregate.
There are, in my opinion, three key reasons why The Amicus Anthology works.
First, Hallenbeck provides historical context to the horror compendium film in his opening and closing chapters, which reference the likes of Waxworks, Dead of Night, and Creepshow.
Second, he contextualises Amicus's anthologies in relation to their single-story horrors, such as The Skull, and their non-horror films, such as the Amicus in all but name Dr Who adaptations with Cushing as (a) Who. (This Amicus/Who nexus is worth noting, with third and fourth Who's Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker both appearing in Amicus anthology horrors.)
Finally, Hallenbeck makes you think: Do you prefer to see Amicus's guest stars or Hammer's character actors? Do you prefer segments or wholes? Do you prefer humour as punchline or intermittently? Does a great segment outweigh a good film?
Sunday, 22 June 2014
Doc of the Dead
As an introduction to the zombie film this documentary is a disappointment. There are two major reasons for this.
First, while the inaugural zombie film, White Zombie (1932) is referenced, the history presented is very much from Night of the Living Dead (1968) onwards. Certainly, George A. Romero’s film inaugurated a paradigm shift in the nature of the zombie, from labourer-producer to flesh eater consumer, but this point could have been made clearer by referencing, for example, Plague of the Zombies (1966) as a point of contrast.
Second, all the films mentioned – others include Return of the Living Dead (1985), Shaun of the Dead (2003), and 28 Days Later (2002) – are Anglo-American. The contributions of continental European film-makers are entirely absent. This is a problem when you remember that Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) was a co-production with Dario Argento and that the film’s success at the Italian box-office led to several tribute productions. Two of particular note here are Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979), for its fusion of old school voodoo zombie and new school flesh-eater, and Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980), for featuring running zombies more than 20 years before 28 Days Later or the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004).
With the film running only 82 minutes and feeling padded out even these these omissions are all the more striking.
And, finally, if you are going to feature Joanna Angel talking about her zombie-porn crossover shouldn’t you also mention that Joe D’Amato, was there first?
First, while the inaugural zombie film, White Zombie (1932) is referenced, the history presented is very much from Night of the Living Dead (1968) onwards. Certainly, George A. Romero’s film inaugurated a paradigm shift in the nature of the zombie, from labourer-producer to flesh eater consumer, but this point could have been made clearer by referencing, for example, Plague of the Zombies (1966) as a point of contrast.
Second, all the films mentioned – others include Return of the Living Dead (1985), Shaun of the Dead (2003), and 28 Days Later (2002) – are Anglo-American. The contributions of continental European film-makers are entirely absent. This is a problem when you remember that Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) was a co-production with Dario Argento and that the film’s success at the Italian box-office led to several tribute productions. Two of particular note here are Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979), for its fusion of old school voodoo zombie and new school flesh-eater, and Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980), for featuring running zombies more than 20 years before 28 Days Later or the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004).
With the film running only 82 minutes and feeling padded out even these these omissions are all the more striking.
And, finally, if you are going to feature Joanna Angel talking about her zombie-porn crossover shouldn’t you also mention that Joe D’Amato, was there first?
Friday, 30 May 2014
Offbeat
With Headpress's Offbeat editor Julian Upton presents 400+ pages on what the book's subtitle identifies as "British Cinema’s Curiosities, Obscurities and Forgotten Gems." Other than mentioning the films encompassed within this remit only cover a thirty year period from c. 1955-85 (so no Tod Slaughter or 30s Edgar Wallace adaptations, for instance; though there are certainly other places you can read up on these) it is a fair enough description of the films surveyed and reviewed within.
So, for example, if we’re talking Hammer then it is emphatically not the Gothics for which they are best known, rather their swashbucklers and adventure romps like Captain Clegg and Pirates of Blood River, or the brilliant Cash on Demand where Peter Cushing is for once outperformed by another, Andre Morell; admittedly Morell had played his role on TV and so had the advantage. Or, if it’s Hammer’s most famous house director, Terence Fisher, then it is one of the three sci-fi films he made for another studio, Planet, namely The Earth Dies Screaming.
I’d like to think that I’m somewhat close to the ideal reader for the book, arrogant though you may judge me: I’ve seen about half of the films reviewed within and would say that I concur with the authors most of the time on these. Two things help here. One, the reviewers resist the urge to proclaim each and every film as a forgotten mini-masterpiece or suchlike. Rather they accept the films on their own merits, or lack thereof. Two, they provide their working rather than just their correct answer. That is they explain why they feel the way they do about a film. As such even if I do not agree with the reviewer of No Blade of Grass’s opinion I can understand that he is paying attention to the source novel, whereas I was not considering the film in terms of adaptation.
Even more important, however, is that Offbeat provided further encouragement to seek out those titles I had heard of but not seen, and introduced me to others which I had not, or which I might have grokked at some point but since forgotten.
In addition to the reviews Offbeat also presents several overviews of a time period, sub-genre, cycle or trend. These are informative as an orientation and also point out topics of further consideration. For example, the essay on the pop/rock musical posits a significant difference between the Elvis films from the US and the Cliff Richard and British Invasion films from the UK that followed them. The Elvis films were entrusted to older, established directors who worked to make Elvis a safer property, whereas the British films often took chances on younger filmmakers closer in age to their subjects, this resulting in a less predictable fare. The reviews generally run two or three pages, begin with production, cast and crew details, followed by a one-paragraph summary of the plot, followed by a more substantial discussion of the individual film’s merits (or lack thereof) and place in British cinema history.
So, to sum up, if you read this you would probably like Offbeat.
So, for example, if we’re talking Hammer then it is emphatically not the Gothics for which they are best known, rather their swashbucklers and adventure romps like Captain Clegg and Pirates of Blood River, or the brilliant Cash on Demand where Peter Cushing is for once outperformed by another, Andre Morell; admittedly Morell had played his role on TV and so had the advantage. Or, if it’s Hammer’s most famous house director, Terence Fisher, then it is one of the three sci-fi films he made for another studio, Planet, namely The Earth Dies Screaming.
I’d like to think that I’m somewhat close to the ideal reader for the book, arrogant though you may judge me: I’ve seen about half of the films reviewed within and would say that I concur with the authors most of the time on these. Two things help here. One, the reviewers resist the urge to proclaim each and every film as a forgotten mini-masterpiece or suchlike. Rather they accept the films on their own merits, or lack thereof. Two, they provide their working rather than just their correct answer. That is they explain why they feel the way they do about a film. As such even if I do not agree with the reviewer of No Blade of Grass’s opinion I can understand that he is paying attention to the source novel, whereas I was not considering the film in terms of adaptation.
Even more important, however, is that Offbeat provided further encouragement to seek out those titles I had heard of but not seen, and introduced me to others which I had not, or which I might have grokked at some point but since forgotten.
In addition to the reviews Offbeat also presents several overviews of a time period, sub-genre, cycle or trend. These are informative as an orientation and also point out topics of further consideration. For example, the essay on the pop/rock musical posits a significant difference between the Elvis films from the US and the Cliff Richard and British Invasion films from the UK that followed them. The Elvis films were entrusted to older, established directors who worked to make Elvis a safer property, whereas the British films often took chances on younger filmmakers closer in age to their subjects, this resulting in a less predictable fare. The reviews generally run two or three pages, begin with production, cast and crew details, followed by a one-paragraph summary of the plot, followed by a more substantial discussion of the individual film’s merits (or lack thereof) and place in British cinema history.
So, to sum up, if you read this you would probably like Offbeat.
Monday, 24 February 2014
A brief survey
It's been a while since I last posted, having been busy with other things. On this occasion, however, there's a bit of crossover.
I'm doing a pilot study for a bit of research on horror film audiences. There are basically four questions:
1. Do you like US and UK horror films? The answers here are yes, no and it depends on the film.
2. What do you especially like and/or dislike about US and UK horror films?
3. Do you like continental European horror films. Again, the answers here are yes, no and it depends upon the film.
4. What do you especially like and/or dislike about US and UK horror films?
Either leave your answers as a comment or email me at hennesseybrown@gmail.com
Thanks in advance
I'm doing a pilot study for a bit of research on horror film audiences. There are basically four questions:
1. Do you like US and UK horror films? The answers here are yes, no and it depends on the film.
2. What do you especially like and/or dislike about US and UK horror films?
3. Do you like continental European horror films. Again, the answers here are yes, no and it depends upon the film.
4. What do you especially like and/or dislike about US and UK horror films?
Either leave your answers as a comment or email me at hennesseybrown@gmail.com
Thanks in advance
Sunday, 29 December 2013
Hard to Swallow
Just started reading Hard to Swallow: Hard-Core Pornography on Screen, edited by Gail Dines and Darren Kerr.
The introductory chapter includes this howler, on Paul Schrader's Hardcore:
"In this film, starring Rod Steiger, a morally upright evangelical preacher pursues his daughter when she runs away to the decadent west coast of the US, only to turn up in a porn movie. The plot takes us on a journey through the LA porn industry, in which all those he encounters are either damaged, or despicable, and wholly deserving of the beatings Steiger’s character dishes out."
But it's not Steiger, rather George C. Scott.
How can academics get away with such basic factual errors?
Then, in discussing the biases of a documentary, Porn Shutdown, about the impact of a HIV outbreak on the LA porn industry:
"That Porn Shutdown, in contrast, simply sidesteps James suggests once more that there is no complexity to men’s involvement in porn, nothing enigmatic – or, for that matter, visually interesting – about the male porn-performer."
Female performer Jessica Dee, one of those who contracted HIV, was not a major figure in this documentary, So was there nothing interesting about the European porn-performer either?
The introductory chapter includes this howler, on Paul Schrader's Hardcore:
"In this film, starring Rod Steiger, a morally upright evangelical preacher pursues his daughter when she runs away to the decadent west coast of the US, only to turn up in a porn movie. The plot takes us on a journey through the LA porn industry, in which all those he encounters are either damaged, or despicable, and wholly deserving of the beatings Steiger’s character dishes out."
But it's not Steiger, rather George C. Scott.
How can academics get away with such basic factual errors?
Then, in discussing the biases of a documentary, Porn Shutdown, about the impact of a HIV outbreak on the LA porn industry:
"That Porn Shutdown, in contrast, simply sidesteps James suggests once more that there is no complexity to men’s involvement in porn, nothing enigmatic – or, for that matter, visually interesting – about the male porn-performer."
Female performer Jessica Dee, one of those who contracted HIV, was not a major figure in this documentary, So was there nothing interesting about the European porn-performer either?
Saturday, 30 November 2013
Eurohorror
Olney begins by this academic study by demonstrating that European horror cinema of the 60s through 80s has a surprisingly high profile amongst contemporary horror audiences. As evidence of this he cites the successful re-releases of Eurohorror by Grindhouse Releasing along with lavish DVD releases of both acknowledged genre classics such as Lucio Fulci's The Beyond and decidedly lesser entries such as Bruno Mattei's Hell of the Living Dead.
Following this Olney indicates that fan interest in Eurohorror has thus far not been paralleled with equivalent attention amongst academics, with the exception of some hybrid fan-academics. Olney posits that this paucity is partly explicated by the generally marginal position of European popular and genre cinema as a whole. It is also a reflection of the inherently problematic nature of many Eurohorror texts as far as progressive-minded critics are concerned, given not only their apparent sexism, racism, misogyny, and homophobia, but also their tendency to present transgressive combinations of sex and violence.
Olney then introduces his theoretical route out of this impasse, namely the concept of peformative spectatorship. Drawing upon the work of Judith Butler in particular, he posits that the distinctive challenge and opportunity posed by Eurohorror films is their uneasy dynamics. Whereas the Anglophone horror film invites our identification with the hero-protagonist, the Eurohorror film allows us to identify now with the hero-protagonist and now with the monster-antagonist. Paralleling this they allow us to take the roles of both sadist and of masochist.
It is a strong thesis and one which Olney then goes on to demonstrate via detailed textual analyses of a range of Eurohorror films, including films by Dario Argento (Suspiria, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage), Mario Bava (The Whip and the Body), Jesus Franco (Eugenie de Sade, Eugenie.. the Story of her Journey into Perversion, Fulci (The House by the Cemetery, The New York Ripper), Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust), and AntonioMargheriti (Cannibal Apocalypse) amongst others.
There were two aspects of Olney’s analysis which I found slightly disappointing. First, there is little French or German Eurohorror cinema mentioned, with a strong bias towards Italian product. Second, why he looked at women and prison and nunsploitation films in the context of their sadistic-masochistic dynamic while omitting a third strand of women in total institution exhibiting similar dynamics, namely the Nazi sadism film. I would speculate that this is because it is relatively harder to get the typical viewer to temporarily align themselves with the Nazi. This is doubly so when it comes to the continental Europeans of the 1970s who would have been the original audiences for these films.
The challenge now is perhaps one of operationalising the concept of performative spectatorship and seeing how useful it is with actual audiences - i.e. bridging the theory/practice divide.
As it is, Olney’s ideas would appear applicable to many other European horror films that he does not discuss. Two that they made me think of were Terence Fisher’s Dracula and Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre and their respective treatments of the Jonathan Harker character. In Fisher’s film Harker is a vampire hunter intent on destroying Count Dracula, but falls prey to Dracula’s bride and thus himself turns into one of the undead. At this point his fellow vampire hunter Van Helsing becomes the narrative focus and destroys Harker. In Herzog’s film the destruction of Dracula leads to Harker, here just a lawyer, becoming the reincarnation of Dracula. Put another way, Fisher’s Anglo horror film retains the boundaries that Herzog’s Eurohorror film transgresses.
Saturday, 17 August 2013
Do as I say, not as I do?
I have been reading The American West in Film: Critical Approaches to the Western, written by Jon Tuska and published in 1985. Tuska is concerned with seeing how the images of the West presented in Western writing and in Hollywood films (specifically) are true to history.
Unsurprisingly Tuska finds that the films are rarely accurate, with this reflecting a lack of research and/or the deliberate obfuscation of truths about ‘how the West was won,’ namely through violence, treachery, and genocide.
Then, in his conclusion, Tuska mentions the snuff film, which he views as actually existing, but apparently without bothering to undertake any research or fact checking.
An ironic instance of ‘printing the legend’...
Unsurprisingly Tuska finds that the films are rarely accurate, with this reflecting a lack of research and/or the deliberate obfuscation of truths about ‘how the West was won,’ namely through violence, treachery, and genocide.
Then, in his conclusion, Tuska mentions the snuff film, which he views as actually existing, but apparently without bothering to undertake any research or fact checking.
An ironic instance of ‘printing the legend’...
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