The horror movie: new golden age or fangs for the memory?

Thanks to my good friend Paul Rowe for the following article.

Okay. For those of you who aren’t horror fans, get that index finger going and scroll down to the next article. Because none of the following will be of interest to you. At all. But I would like those of you who are - those of you who can name the film that started it all and how old you were when you first watched it and what pattern was printed on your pyjamas – to ask yourself the following question: what is it I love about horror movies? For those with a real love of horror will undoubtedly begin your lists with words like, ‘atmosphere’ and ‘tension’. Yes; good effects help, as does a solid script and decent cast, but it’s the feeling that makes it really happen. Visuals are important of course, primarily the sets; foreboding castles perched on an outcropping in the Carpathians, twisted trees that appear to float above ground level because of an eddying ground-mist. Shock tactics if well deployed can be successful, but easily over-used. Every time the audience is made to jump – prompting laughter – the tension is broken, so this tactic can only be utilised a couple of times if the overall atmosphere is to be maintained throughout the film.

I’m not preaching and this isn’t a thesis – you all know this.

So; if we all know it, why doesn’t Hollywood? Why, at a time when even the most low-budget shoot has production values that the movie-brats of the seventies could have only dreamed of, does every director shoot horror movies as fucking action comedies!?!?

Sorry. Forgive me. But really. Stephen Sommers is the devil. ‘The Mummy’ as Indiana Jones? Karloff would have been getting his bandages all twisted spinning in his sarcophagus. And the concept of Michael Bay having his own production stable churning out remakes of many of the most famous chillers of the last twenty or thirty years would be hilarious if it weren’t so depressing. The naivety being demonstrated is unfathomable. What made ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ and ‘Halloween’ so memorable was the lack of gloss, the immediacy, the feeling that they were shot at the scene on the hand-held camera of a passer by. Watching these films, you can’t really imagine a film crew and lighting rigs and actors working from scripts (the fact that so many of the actors were poor doesn’t matter). Michael Bay does big, stupid, syrupy action films, and then for some bizarre reason obtains the rights to a handful of low-budget independent horror classics and produces them as big, stupid, syrupy action films.

Has the youth of today really got such a short attention span that they need a stabbing, a naked pair of breasts or an explosion every five minutes to keep them interested? Maybe so, maybe they have. Maybe it’s us – the old horror traditionalists – who are naïve. Maybe it’s all business and to hell with creating great films that can be enjoyed for generations.

I had my hopes briefly raised when I learned that the upcoming remake of ‘The Wolf Man’ was to be set in Victorian England (predating the contemporary set 1941 version) and would remain faithful to much of George Waggner’s original. Benicio Del Toro as Larry Talbot? I licked my lips. I’ve since learned the director is Joe Johnston. Joe-‘Jurassic Park 3’-‘Honey I Shrunk the Kids’-Johnston. ‘The Wolf Man’ as family-friendly actioner anyone? Er … no; no thanks. Even with Andrew Kevin Walker, who came over all gothic for ‘Se7en’ and ‘Sleepy Hollow’, having contributed the screenplay, things don’t bode well.

Let’s look at the facts: Best ‘Dracula’ adaptation? F. W. Murnau’s ‘Nosferatu’ (1922) or Todd Browning’s ‘Dracula’ (1931). Best ‘Frankenstein’? James Whale’s 1931 version. Karl Freund gave us the definitive ‘Mummy’ in 1932 and the aforementioned 1941 ‘Wolf Man’ remains arguably the best werewolf movie (with a respectful nod to John Landis’s ‘An American Werewolf in London’). See the pattern? Steady pacing, classic themes, iconic monsters and all simply dripping in atmosphere. Watch ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon’ again. Scary? No, not today it’s not. But wonderfully effective, despite the man-in-costume-that’s-so-tight-he-can’t-bend-his-arms-or-legs-creature, with a lovely sense of claustrophobia and many memorable scenes (you’ll wonder how many times a young Steven Spielberg watched the film for inspiration whilst on the set of ‘Jaws’).

So again; is there no one out there with the courage to make an old-fashioned character driven, straight-faced horror movie? William Friedkin didn’t deem it necessary to throw in a few jokes or a scene or two of slapstick in ‘The Exorcist’, did he? Kubrick managed to successfully adapt ‘The Shining’ without changing the cast into a group of teenagers who’d broken into The Overlook Hotel to smoke dope and boing each other.

So, come on then; ten great, non-comic horror films aimed at adults since ‘The Shining’? Bet you can’t do it. I can’t. ‘The Evil Dead’? Undeniably great, but tongue-in cheek. ‘Near Dark’? More cool than scary. ‘28 Days / Weeks Later’? Convincing end of the world feel these two, you’re glad to put the lights on after they’ve finished and look outside to make sure everything’s still normal. What about the 1982 version of ‘The Thing’, which was a brilliant exercise in paranoia and suspense directed by John Carpenter who - like Landis - seemingly decided that directing half a dozen cracking movies was enough and that all of his future output would be consistently shite. We’ve relied on the Far East for serious chills over the past decade with ‘The Ring’, ‘The Grudge’, ‘The Eye’ etc, but even these titles are quickly becoming generic and tired. Europe? Tomas Alfredson’s ‘Let the Right One In’ can not only claim best horror film of last year, but must feature in the top three or four of any genre.

A few gems aside though, it’s been slim pickings out there.

Right; what about those faithful literary horror adaptations of the nineties? Both Coppola’s ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ and Branagh’s ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’ (Jesus, what’s with the name checking?) were worthy but dull romantic costume dramas, not horror films.

So please. Somebody. Please. Somebody please make a great horror film.

Joe Johnston?

Maybe. You never know.

But don’t bet on it.

by Paul Rowe

PERSONAL FAVES: Freaks

In the early 1930s, Tod Browning was on a roll. He'd scored a huge hit in 1925 with 'The Unholy Three', the tale of a trio of sideshow performers - a strongman, a midget and a ventriloquist - who leave the circus and apply their combined talents to criminal enterprises. His 1931 adaptation of 'Dracula' starring Bela Lugosi was just as popular. The same year he made the largely forgotten boxing picture 'Iron Man', then looked for a project that would combined the sensational and the macabre the way his most successful productions had.

It was Harry Earles, who'd played the felonious midget in 'The Unholy Three' (based on a novel by Clarence Aaron "Tod" Robbins), who brought to Browning's attention a short story by Robbins called 'Spurs', about a group of circus freaks wronged by their able-bodied fellow performers, who banded together to take revenge. Browning, himself a sideshow contortionist prior to his Hollywood career, seized upon the idea with zeal.

He assembled a cast of genuine sideshow freaks (I'm using the word 'freak' solely because that's the title of the film; there is no prejudice attached to it) including an hermaphrodite, a human torso, a bearded lady, microcephalics (or, to quote the script's sixty-years-before-the-idea-of-political-correctness description "pin-heads"), midgets and siamese twins. Apart from one scene at the end (I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen the film), there's no special effects, no camera trickery, no it's-all-done-with-mirrors. No, siree. Browning keeps it real.

To say that the end result was controversial is putting it mildly. Half an hour was cut from the film (ie. a third of its 90 minute running time) by the studio following outraged reaction from preview audiences. In the UK, even in this truncated version, it was banned for thirty years. Ultimately, 'Freaks' did for Browning's career what 'Peeping Tom' did for Michael Powell's and he made only four other films before retiring from the business in 1939, leading a reclusive lifestyle until his death in 1962. Thankfully, the film itself has survived. It has outlasted censorship (although controversy remains) and has been rediscovered - and championed - by new generations of film-goers.

The plot is simple and pacy: glamorous trapeze artist Cleopatra (Ogla Baclanova) is part-amused-part-irritated by midget Hans (Harry Earles)'s crush on her, until she discovers that he's inherited a considerable fortune. In league with strongman Hercules (Henry Victor), Cleopatra encourages his attentions. They marry; Cleopatra and Hercules behave abusively towards the freaks during the wedding feast; Cleopatra tries to poison Hans on their wedding night.

Apart from a romantic subplot between animal trainer Venus (a radiant Leila Hyams) and laconic clown Phroso (Wallace Ford), 'Freaks' concentrates on the discovery of Cleopatra and Hercules's treachery and the grim retribution that follows. As a horror film, it's creepily effective. A scene of the freaks crawling through the mud under a circus waggon, closing in on their Cleopatra and Hercules - the human torso has a switchblade clamped between his teeth and a look on his face that suggests he isn't going to let the absence of hands stand in his way - is one of the most chilling and unforgettable images in cinema.

But Browning never lets 'Freaks' become just an exercise in grotesquerie. Hans' first act infatuation with Cleopatra is played out against a sequence of wryly observed and often quite charming vignettes which establish the freaks as fully rounded people in their own right. Many of his cast - such as the siamese twins (Daisy and Violet Hilton) and the human torso (Randian) - were already well-known vaudeville and sideshow acts in their own right. Browning cannily has them retain these personas for the film. He also structures scenes around the minutaie of their lives - the difficulty of romantic relationships for the twins; the human torso's cigarette lighting technique - that humanises and dignifies them. Sure, the freaks come on like badass mothers at the end - but that's only because supposedly normal people have crossed the boundary with them.

'Freaks' deserves a place on any list of great, favourite or classic movies. It's unique. A true one-off. It would never get made today, given the prevailing climate of political correctness. The bastions of PC would have us believe that 'Freaks' is exploitative because it trades on its characters' deformities, a perspective that completely misses the point. 'Freaks' surpasses their deformities; it lets them be the heroes.