Tuesday, November 15, 2011

HORROR HARVEST: Part Thirteen: New masters for a new millennium

"Let the Right One In" -- a terrifying romance.
Horror films continue to come from unexpected places and fresh perspectives. Mexico brought us Guillermo del Toro; Sweden gave birth to “Let the Right One In.” Japan and South Korea continue a flood of horror offerings that are either released or remade in America. Low-budget innovators such as Lucky McKee and Bill Paxton and auteurs like Terry Gilliam still turn out disturbing narratives that push the boundaries.

Whether horror will continue to boom and blossom, or whether it will wither into a curio like the Western genre, will depend on the mood of the movie-going public and the inventiveness of writers and directors. It will remain fascinating because of the vicarious transgressions it lets us experience; because it posits a world beyond the mundane; because it dares us to look into our darkest depths.

Then it lets us go, at least nominally. Remember – it’s only a movie, it’s only a movie . . .


The Devil’s Backbone
Guillermo del Toro
2001





The Others
Alejandro Amenabar
2001





Bubba Ho-Tep
Don Coscarelli
2002





Frailty
Bill Paxton
2002





May
Lucky McKee
2002





Tideland
Terry Gilliam
2005





Pan’s Labyrinth
Guillermo del Toro
2006





The Host
Bong Joon-ho
2006





Grindhouse
Quentin Tarentino, Robert Rodriguez
2007





The Orphange
Juan Antonio Bayona
2007





Teeth
Mitchell Lichtenstein
2007





Let the Right One In
Tomas Alfredson
2008


Monday, November 14, 2011

HORROR HARVEST: Part Twelve: Art-house horrors, 1973-2000

"Don't Look Now" -- horror film as Cubist puzzle.
While mainstream horror blockbusters and a seemingly endless stream of highly graphic, cheaply made horror series were flooding the market in the last quarter of the 20th century, a handful of filmmakers were producing a third line of product. Iconoclasts (Roeg), past masters (Russell, Zemeckis) and future horror superstars (del Toro, Jackson) were all crafting well-thought-out, innovative works that deserve a closer look.



The Wicker Man
Robin Hardy
1973




Don’t Look Now
Nicholas Roeg
1973




The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
Nicolas Gessner
1976





Burnt Offerings
Dan Curtis
1976





The Changeling
Peter Medak
1980




Near Dark
Kathyrn Bigelow
1987


The Lair of the White Worm
Ken Russell
1988





Lady in White
Frank LaLoggia
1988





Jacob’s Ladder
Adrian Lyne
1990





Man Bites Dog
Remy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel, Benoit Poelvoorde
1992





Cronos
Guillermo del Toro
1993





Cemetery Man
Michele Soavi
1994





Heavenly Creatures
Peter Jackson
1994




What Lies Beneath
Robert Zemeckis
2000


Friday, November 11, 2011

HORROR HARVEST: Part Eleven: Horror goes mainstream; or, bring the kids!

Robert Shaw meets his comeuppance in "Jaws."
When horror moved from the drive-in to the multiplex, the trends that had dominated the early 1970s were ripe for harvest. The first major step towards Steven Spielberg’s present status as America’s most influential director was the phenomenal success of “Jaws.”

Although it is a thriller and an adventure film (with a touch of a tribute to Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People” as well as "Moby Dick") as well, it is in structure and tone a horror film. Its massive financial return created the “summer blockbuster” and made major studios decide to haul horror out of the ghetto, provide substantial funding, promotional and booking support, and seek out up-and-coming talents in the genre. The “Halloween,” “Friday the 13th,” “Nightmare” and many other lesser film series (“Chucky,” “Leprechaun,” et al) all sprung from this impulse.
The seemingly unstoppable Jason from the "Friday the 13th" film series.

It didn't hurt that the most significant American horror writer since Edgar Allan Poe came along. Stephen King was not only in touch with the zeitgeist, he was prolific. His work was seemingly written with an eye to film adaptation -- dozens of books have been converted into film and/or television projects, some more than once. Whether it was the gimmicky menace of "The Mangler" or the epic post-apocalyptic vision of "The Stand," people found profit in putting it on screen.

It seemed that every established and aspiring director wanted a horror film on his or her resume.Kubrick, Nichols, Donner were among the honored directors who picked up the blood y mantle. More significantly, A-list actors such as Gregory Peck, Jack Nicholson, Brad Pitt and James Caan signed on to horror projects. Most significantly of all, in 1991 "The Silence of the Lambs" became the first horror and to date only horror film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The examples listed below are a representative selection of films that occupied the public consciousness as much or more than the more “legitimate” dramas, adventures, and comedies that used to hold sway.

All these mainstream efforts legitimized the grammar and content of film horror. Just as much of Spielberg's early work was a synthesis of classic-era movie tropes, so did the big-budget horror films subsume and build on the film work of the past. To some extent, they would overshadow and displace their ancestors in the filmgoing mind. It would take a self-conscious, post-modern era to bring back the memories of those progenitors.


Jaws
Steven Spielberg
1975





Carrie
Brian DePalma
1976





The Omen
Richard Donner
1976





Alien
Ridley Scott
1979





The Shining
Stanley Kubrick
1980





The Howling
Joe Dante
1981





Fright Night
Tom Holland
1985





Aliens
James Cameron
1986





The Lost Boys
Joel Schumacher
1987





Misery
Rob Reiner
1990





The Silence of the Lambs
Jonathan Demme
1991





Wolf
Mike Nichols
1995





The Frighteners
Peter Jackson
1996





Se7en
David Fincher
1996





Sleepy Hollow
Tim Burton
1999

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

HORROR HARVEST: Part Ten: The Three C’s – Craven, Carpenter and Cronenberg (OK, and Hooper and Raimi)

John Carpenter's "They Live" -- existence as conspiracy.
What happened? Why were the last 30 years of the 20th century the most fruitful, penetrating and transgressive years for American horror cinema?

A lot of factors fed in to the widespread success of the horror film period (and the subsequent writing of countless studies, dissertations and theses on same). The graphic intrusion of the horrors of Vietnam and domestic crimes visa television lowered the resistance of the potential audience to explicit terror. By the end of Nixon administration, the American dream had begun to sour and curl at the edges, and it was hard not to be caught up in a feeling of hopelessness and ennui.

On more a practical level, there were more teenagers to frighten. The 1970s saw the coming of age of the tail end of the Baby Boom – the last generation to date to experience material well-being and economic abundance as a group to date. Additionally, advances in movie technology in terms of makeup, prosthetics and effects (pre-CGI) made it possible to stage more ambitious and convincing scenes of horror.
"Videodrome" -- disgusting virtuosity.

Finally, the time was right -- to question EVERYTHING. Whatever cultural, political or psychosocial reasons are given for their popularity, these films represented a catharsis and a way to think through implications of reality onscreen that were powerful and influential.

Carpenter’s deep suspicions about society, systems of belief and consensus reality come to the fore in “The Thing” and “They Live”; his out-and-out solid cinematic abilities make “Halloween” a classic film text that would serve as a template for countless others. “Prince of Darkness” and “Mouth of Madness” would push his sensibilities into even more breathtaking territory – one in which the dominion of evil was only a flip of perception or an accident of fate away from the world.

Cronenberg delves even further into the underlying terrors of existence, especially the fragility and unreliability of the human body. His “body horror” palette is broad enough to tackle numerous levels of meaning on any given project, and has pushed him, like Carpenter and Raimi, into more mainstream and “legitimate” projects.

Of the five directors listed in this chapter, it seems clear now that only Carpenter, Cronenberg and Raimi will be canonized (and Raimi will be praised primarily as a stylist, not as a “thinker”), while Craven and Hooper will be seen as opportunistic journeymen. This seems odd. Craven’s “Last House on the Left,” along with Friedkin’s “Exorcist” three years later and Hooper’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” broke all the filmmaking taboos -- and made tons of money doing so.
"The Exorcist" -- no safety anywhere.
Unfortunately, lesser talents could only see the gore on screen, not the even more disturbing ideas behind them. “Last House on the Left” would not be remembered an essay on the senselessness of revenge, but as a precursor of torture porn. “The Exorcist,” although it contains a redemptive ending, merciless tormented a child and her family. “Massacre” offers a perverted All-American family, and lingers on the savaging of women. This misogyny and sadistic Puritanism would continue, sanctified by financial success. Horror was leaving the drive-in and entering the multiplex.


Last House on the Left
Wes Craven
1972





The Exorcist
William Friedkin
1973



The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Tobe Hooper
1974



The Hills Have Eyes
Wes Craven
1975



They Came from Within
David Cronenberg
1975





Rabid
David Cronenberg
1977



Halloween
John Carpenter
1978





Salem’s Lot
Tobe Hooper
1979



The Brood
David Cronenberg
1979



Scanners
David Cronenberg
1981





The Evil Dead
Sam Raimi
1981



The Thing
John Carpenter
1982



Poltergeist
Tobe Hooper
1982





Videodrome
David Cronenberg
1983



The Dead Zone
David Cronenberg
1983



A Nightmare on Elm Street
Wes Craven
1984





Lifeforce
Tobe Hooper
1985



The Fly
David Cronenberg
1986



Evil Dead II
Sam Raimi
1987





Prince of Darkness
John Carpenter
1987



The Serpent and the Rainbow
Wes Craven
1988





They Live
John Carpenter
1988





Dead Ringers
David Cronenberg
1988





Darkman
Sam Raimi
1990



The People Under the Stairs
Wes Craven
1991





In the Mouth of Madness
John Carpenter
1994





Scream
Wes Craven
1996



Crash
David Cronenberg
1996



Vampires
John Carpenter
1998





eXistenZ
David Cronenberg
1999