Tuesday 12 December 2017

Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction


Slime, The Mime, Toy Cemetery...

Released in September of this year, Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction (with Will Errikson) not only brought back a lot of memories and introduced me to some new (old) must-reads, but it also sheds a light on an essential chapter of modern horror history. Working from the premise that a trilogy of horror novels – Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, and The Other by Thomas Tryon – kicked started a run on pulp horror fiction, this book is probably the last word on the topic.

Paperbacks, wisely, leaves the reader to engage with his or her own predilections when it comes to the titles under discussion, not necessarily delving into what could be called mainstream ideals of quality. There's a certain understanding that the books included here operate on their own plain when it comes to such things. Paperbacks also does an outstanding job of juggling information about the writers, the trends, and the artists behind these works, while at the same time providing plot descriptions (which amounts to giving recommendations – if you like the description, why not try the novel?) and a wealth of images that nudges this book into art book territory.

The author of Horrorstör and My Best Friend's Exorcism, Hendrix's enthusiasm for the subject is catching. Since reading this book, I’ve read five of the novels found within its pages, with a pile more accumulating on my nightstand. Whether you pick up this book for nostalgia, information, or out of blind curiosity, it’s a sure bet to become a mainstay of the horror library canon.

Thursday 7 December 2017

More Favourite Horror Flicks, Alphabetically: Funny Games


Funny Games
Dir: Michael Haneke. Cast: Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Mühe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering & Stefan Clapczynski. 1997

In writing about each of the flicks that I’ve included in More Favourite Horror Flicks, I came to a dead stop when I reached Funny Games. If you look at the date of my last post in this series – September 20, 2016 – you’ll get an idea of just how difficult I find writing about this film. The truth is, I just didn’t want to. Funny Games is not a pleasant film, nor is it a fun one. It is, however I think, an outstanding one.

A difficult watch, Funny Games tells the story of a family – wife, husband, son – that is terrorized by a couple of arrogant and psychotic youth. Things you don’t want to happen do happen. The fourth wall is broken to implicate the viewer in the mayhem. It’s engrossing, to be sure, but it’s also deflating. And it’s entirely engrossing.

One of the great strengths of Funny Games (I’ve not seen Haneke’s American remake with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth – I don’t see the point) is that you react to it. Strongly. My experience of it is that I became so engaged that I felt like what was happening on screen was happening to me, to people I cared about. It’s a weird and unpleasant immersion that is so strong that it rises above the despair it presents and emerges as a work of truly exceptional moviemaking.  

 Whew! It feels great to finally get that done.


Wednesday 19 July 2017

Goodbye, Uncle George



I didn’t expect George Romero to die this past weekend. In fact, he’d just announced a new movie, Road of the Dead, another zombie movie in a long line of zombie movies, a sub-genre he’d contemporized. At least the first two of his zombie movies – Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead – are classics, with many horror fans adding Romero’s third zombie flick, Day of the Dead, to that list, and with three more coming later in his career. In between Night and Dawn, he made my favourite of all his films – Martin, an updating of the vampire mythos that brings both the supernatural and the psychosexual into play. My take on Martin is that it’s a movie about being forced into becoming what someone assumes you are. In hindsight, I think this is something that happened to Romero as a filmmaker.

When Road was announced, I joked with someone on Facebook about the fact that Romero was making yet another zombie movie, and that perhaps it should be called Dead Bored. It wasn't that I thought Road would be bad, it was that I felt zombie movies were the only kind of movie for which he could get financing. In a sense, Romero’s later zombie films, enjoyable as they are, felt like he was “keeping his oar in” in terms of his need to keep making movies until he was able to make a different kind of film, horror or otherwise.   

By all reports, Romero was a filmmaker who wasn’t interested in the business side of filmmaking, disliked it even. What he was interested in was making movies. It was just this sort of attitude that brought Night of the Living Dead into being in 1968, a movie filled with metaphors, even if they maybe came from Romero’s subconscious. Low budget, and created by a group of enthusiastic newcomers who just wanted to make a movie, Night became a phenomena, and regardless of what was planned or unplanned thematically, their movie most definitely reflected the zeitgeist of the times.

In the outpouring of public grief and appreciation within the horror community following Romero’s death, one thought that has been expressed over and over again is the fact that Romero pretty much influenced anyone who has tried to make a low budget movie since 1968. I believe this sentiment to be true. The spirit that brought Night of the Living Dead into existence seems to propel filmmakers across the globe, and in that sense, Romero will be with us for a long time to come. I like to think that Romero’s 1981 film Knightriders is the most autobiographical of all his work, and that it reflects just this spirit of a small band of renegades against a modern world rapidly losing its soul.

Romero seemed a big, loveable teddy bear, and this is born out by those who knew him. I don’t know whether or not he was aware of this, but he was loved in the horror community. It was impossible not to think of him as our favourite uncle. Through his movies, he gave us so much. Through his honest appreciation of his fans, he became in a sense, one of us.

The fact of Romero’s death was a shock. The fact that it was the result of lung cancer was not; Romero was a longtime heavy smoker. His death, however, is a reminder of his most famous metaphor in a filmography filled with great metaphors. Romero gave us the slow, shambling zombie. The ones who gathered en masse and attacked. They didn’t run, unlike their new millennium counterparts. They were simply relentless. That is what made them truly frightening. It was their inevitability, like death itself. Romero’s zombies may be slow, but sooner or later they WILL get you. This past weekend, the inevitable caught up with one of my favourite filmmakers.

Goodbye, Uncle George. You will be missed. I hope the zombies are treating their king well.

Filmography as Director:
Night of the Living Dead
There’s Always Vanilla
Season of the Witch
The Crazies
Martin
Dawn of the Dead
Knightriders
Creepshow
Day of the Dead
Monkey Shines
Two Evil Eyes (with Dario Argento)
The Dark Half
Bruiser
Land of the Dead
Diary of the Dead
Survival of the Dead