Carnography

Ghostwatch (1992)

Today's review is of something that is, very technically, not a movie, but a feature-length TV drama. However, it's considered (at least today, 24 years after its one-and-only broadcast) to be one of the first horror mockumentaries, and an influence on other cultural zeitgeists such as The Blair Witch Project. Furthermore, on a more personal note, it had a great effect on me - from my initial terror as a 13-year-old girl watching part of it and thinking it was real (as did a lot of the country), to being one of the events that really got me interested in things like this - found footage and mockumentaries and how they're presented and marketed to make them seem genuine, and how the viewing public's reactions feed further into this, making them seem all the more real. Welcome... to Ghostwatch.

It's Halloween, and the BBC have planned a special live broadcast for the night - a live investigation of what is said to be one of the most haunted houses in Britain. Well-known TV personalities Sarah Greene, Craig Charles, Mike Smith and - manning the studio - Michael Parkinson are all hosting this investigation into the supernatural, along with experts in both the paranormal and skeptics to offer opposing views. The house in question is a normal-looking semi-detached house in a London suburb that's become host to a whole bevy of poltergeist activity, a lot of it focusing on the two young daughters in the house, Suzanne and Kimmy. The ghost is known as "Pipes", because at the beginning of the haunting their mother had tried to explain away the noises as just the pipes banging. As the live broadcast continues, viewers to the show ring in with various stories about previous tenants of the house, from an 19th century baby farmer to a disturbed transvestite who hanged himself in the house and wasn't found for some time, during which his dozens of cats ate part of his face, and the supernatural activity increases to a disturbing degree. Too late the show hosts realise that what they have done is create a nationwide seance, giving Pipes the power to enter every home to wreck havoc...

Ghostwatch was never meant to be thought of as "real". It was a Screen One production, had a cast list listed in the Radio Times, and when the show began it had a "Written By" credit at the very start. But a lot of people tuned in late, myself included, and so missed the signs that this was fictional. So when the mammaries started pointing upwards and the feces impacted with the fan, an awful lot of us freaked the fuck out, convinced that we were seeing something real. To make matters worse, a lot of people turned off before the end so that they didn't see the credits at the end (on Monday morning, the one girl in my class who had seen it through to the end was considered something of a hero, and had to give plot recaps for most of the day). Effectively, this was the British version of the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast - there weren't quite riots reported in the streets, but there were a lot of complaints, and Ghostwatch was blamed for the death of at least one person by suicide and listed as a cause of post-traumatic stress disorder in children (speaking for myself, I couldn't sleep for three days after seeing it and to this day I find it difficult to watch it at night or alone, and this is despite knowing exactly how it was made and all the behind the camera tricks). It was banned from ever being shown on TV for a decade, and even though it has since been released on DVD it has never been shown on British TV since.

One of the reasons (I think, at least) that Ghostwatch ended up being so creepily successful was the way in which it hid "Pipes" in shots throughout the programme - not quite subliminal imagery but certainly enough to make you do a few double-takes. They even play with this idea at the very beginning, with a clip in which the viewers can all see a shadowy figure slowly appear standing in the girls' bedroom - but when the footage is played back, the figure doesn't appear, making us question if we're actually seeing ghosts or if its just our imaginations running wild. The sound of the ghostly cats who accompany Pipes as he gains power is also incredibly unnerving, and the fact that all the faces involved in this were well-known British TV personalities (Sarah Green in particular was a children's TV presenter at the time) make the audience feel much closer to them and more likely to believe in what's happening to them.

Today, of course, Ghostwatch is very dated, and the sheer fact that it was touted as a live broadcast in 1992 means that it's simply not going to capture the same belief that it did back then. It was also based on the infamous Enfield Poltergeist case of the 1970s, and because of films like The Conjuring 2 people are much more likely to see through it and recognise the story behind it than we were back in 1992. As a product of its time, though, it was both brilliand and scary as hell, and a huge influence on the mockumentary horror genre as we know it today.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

 

Related articles

Devil's Pass (2013)

Episode 50 (2011)

The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

Nightbreed (1990)

Best laid plans, yadda yadda yadda. Everything was going so well this month until I got hit first with a severe ear infection and then with a severe reaction to the antibiotics I was given to combat said ear infection. It's difficult to focus on anything when even sitting up makes you dizzy and you can't even keep water down, and so reviews had to be put on hold until I was feeling well enough to give this, my 200th review on this blog, the attention it deserved. And because it's my 200th review it needs to be of something special as well, so it's time for another of my (current) favourite films of all time - Clive Barker's Nightbreed.

Aaron Boone is a young man suffering from some mental problems, most notably a recurring dream of a place called Midian, inhabited by monsters, that he feels strangely drawn to. He tells all of this to his psychiatrist, Phillip Decker, not realising that Decker has ulterior motives for treating him - Decker is in fact a serial killer who is framing Boone for his crimes, and also wants to find Midian for himself. A chance encounter with another seemingly insane man in a hospital who also knows of Midian sets Boone on a journey to find the mysterious city; shortly after finding Midian and encountering some of its residents, however, the police catch up to and kill Boone for the crimes he has been framed for. His devastated girlfriend Lori refuses to believe that he was a killer, however, and starts her own journey retracing his steps to try to understand what was going through his mind before he died. This eventually leads both her and Decker to Midian and its monstrous inhabitants; meanwhile Boone's body has disappeared from the morgue...

First off, if you're going to watch Nightbreed for yourself, try to get hold of the recently-released Director's Cut, which restores about 20 minutes of footage that was cut from the original because of - you guessed it - studio meddling. 20th Century Fox didn't understand the story Barker was telling with Nightbreed, and so they cut the film to ribbons in order to reshape it into something they could understand, trying to turn it into a standard slasher horror movie rather than the dark fairy tale horror that it is. According to Barker himself, at one point a producer was even concerned that "The monsters [were] the good guys," to which Barker replied, "That's the point."

Obviously then, Nightbreed is not a traditional horror film. The "monsters" (the 'Breed or Tribes of the Moon as they're known in the film) live hidden in Midian, far away from humanity, because humanity over the centuries hunted them to near-extinction simply for what they were. It is a rather heavy-handed allegory for bigotry of all stripes, but really no less so than the X-Men. And of course, once people like Decker discover Midian, the 'Breeds' lives are in danger yet again as he brings down a literal redneck hunting posse onto them, simply because they are different (and because they reject Decker utterly). The fact that the 'Breed are the protagonists for the movie does not mean that they are literally "good guys" though; most of them are more than capable of defending themselves in combat if necessary, and some, like the Bezerkers and the feral Peloquin, actively enjoy killing and eating humans (although the latter usually refrains because it is against the Law set down by the 'Breed's god Baphomet). Regardless, until Decker brings destruction down upon them they've harmed nobody, and so of course we root for them to survive and get their revenge on the people who hate and harm them.

Another unusual and stand-out thing about Nightbreed is the casting of David Cronenberg as the murderous Decker. He's not normally thought of as an actor, although he does have an extensive filmography in that area - usually in small cameos or bit parts - but here he does play an evil serial killing psychiatrist very well. I think it helps that he looks "normal" (at least for a horror director) and so he has a "banality of evil" look about him - death in a tailored grey suit and glasses. Although the "Zipperface" mask he wears when he kills is remarkably disturbing for something so simply designed.

Obviously with this being a Clive Barker film, Nightbreed has a lot of outsider, eroticism and LGBT themes, which is probably another reason why the studio execs hacked at it so much. There's the idea of people being uncomfortable in their own skin and yearning to become someone - or something else, and eventually achieving that transformation but becoming hated for it. There's also a lot of raw sexuality on the part of the 'Breed, most notably in one scene where one member of the 'Breed seduces and incapacitates a prison guard while completely naked - also a homage to that other cult film ruined by studio meddling, Lifeforce. When Nightbreed was first released it was not well-received by critics, most likely because of its botched editing and marketing; but over the years it has achieved a much-deserved cult status, like several other similarly maligned films. Personally, I think it's a beautiful film, both in the incredibly detailed designs of the 'Breed and of Midian, and as that cautionary dark fairy tale where the monsters are the heroes who have to fight back against the evil people who want to destroy them simply for being who they are.

(And also, the characters of Rachel and Shuna Sassi were two of my earliest girl crushes.)

Amazon UK

Amazon US

 

Related articles

The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

Shivers (1975)

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)

The BBFC used to be really, really afraid of chainsaws. Everyone knows, of course, about their feelings towards The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and how it remained only watchable in a select few cinemas for over 20 years before someone there finally came to their senses and decided that it wasn't going to cause mass panic and people rushing down to their local B&Q in preparation for their own massacres. But their fear of chainsaws extended further than that one film - Fred Olen Ray's Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers also fell afoul of the censor's glare, but not in the way you'd expect. For many years, the film was available in the UK only with a very specific edit made to its cover art - instead of the word "Chainsaw" they insisted on only the silhouette of one, in case the very word was going to trigger mass murders throughout the country. So it's quite possible that a fair few people who weren't paying enough attention when they bought a copy ended up with a film quite different from what they were expecting...

Jack Chandler is a private detective working in Los Angeles on a missing persons case. A girl called Samantha has run away from home and Chandler has been hired by the girl's mother to find her and bring her home safely. At the same time a series of gruesome murders is taking place in the city, where people - or to be more exact their body parts - are being found after having been dismembered by chainsaw. The murders are being committed by prostitutes, including the slightly manic Lori and the sultry Mercedes, and a mysterious man in black watches each one through a window or other vantage point. Chandler suspects that Samantha has somehow gotten involved in these goings-on, and he's partially right - the girl has joined the strange chainsaw-worshiping cult (complete with the ceremonial drinking of motor oil), but only because they killed a friend of hers and she wants revenge. Chandler ends up caught in the middle; a human sacrifice for the "Egyptian chainsaw gods" while chainsaw duels carry on around him...

I think it's pretty clear that Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers is a movie not taking itself very seriously. The first clue should have been the title and the cover art, but the chainsaw duel and the "chainsaw of the gods" talk should have clued anyone who missed this in pretty quickly. Add to that the Raymond Chandler/Philip Marlowe-esque narration that Jack Chandler gives throughout the film, often painting a far better picture of himself than what actually happens on screen, and the fact that the cult leader is none other than the late and missed Gunnar Hansen of Leatherface fame, and it's quite clear that this film falls firmly into the satire/parody area of horror comedy.

The film is also pure exploitation, with noted scream queens Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer repeatedly disrobing for the camera - usually arming themselves with chainsaws moments later. Interestingly, however, despite the obvious arguments for this being just another "male gaze" horror movie, it also has quite a feminist slant. The men in the film - notably Chandler and Hansen's cult leader - don't do any of the fighting or killing themselves. In fact Chandler ends up as a sacrifice tied to a slab while Quigley and Bauer's characters fight it out with chainsaws over him - a pretty big reversal of the usual setup of the woman being the sacrifice and the strong man coming in to rescue her. Samantha is perfectly capable of looking after herself and getting revenge for her dead friend, and does so in spectacular fashion - body-painted naked double chainsaw dance scene aside.

Director Fred Olen Ray is well known - infamous, even - for his low-budget B-movies, and true to form Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers cost only $23,000 to make. In some scenes it's quite clear that the blood and viscera supposedly from the chainsaw killings is being thrown on by someone off-screen - sometimes they don't even get the angle right and a stream of blood will fly in at about 6 feet high when the chainsaw is cutting into someone about two feet below that. However, it's a cheap-and-cheerful type of low-budget horror, and the energy and enthusiasm of the film makes up for the obvious corner-cutting. And if you've ever seen or heard of some of Olen Ray's other horror efforts, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers is a shining diamond in comparison. Most importantly though, it's just plain fun.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

 

Contamination (1980)

Italian cinema of the 70s and 80s was great - although to be fair, the Italian cinema of today could also be great, but I don't think I've seen any so we'll focus on the decades I know. It was great because it was almost always shot on a low budget, on a limited timeframe, in a language not all of the cast could even speak, and it was probably ripping off - sorry, taking inspiration from - a big-budget American film that had come out in the previous year or so. It's the kind of thing that you think just shouldn't work, and while often it doesn't, when it does it can be either a hidden masterpiece or an unintentional comedy. I'll leave you to guess which of the three categories Contamination falls into.

A cargo ship enters the New York harbour without any radio contact between the crew and the authorities. A small team boards the ship and finds it apparently deserted at first - until they find the crew all dead and horribly mutilated. They also find the ship's cargo, which is allegedly boxes of coffee from South America, but in reality is dozens upon dozens of strange green egg-like objects, which grow and pulse when they get warm. One of these eggs bursts, showering most of the team with goo that promptly makes their torsos explode. Colonel Stella Holmes arrives to take charge of the situation, along with the sole survivor of the team investigating the ship, a police officer called Arris. They determine that the eggs are of alien origin and must have come from Mars - something they had been warned about by one of the astronauts from the last manned mission to Mars who saw something there he couldn't explain, but was laughed out of the service upon his return and treated as crazy. After recruiting the understandably still-bitter Commander Hubbard, the trio head to South America to investigate the place where the "coffee" came from and try to get to the truth of where the eggs came from and what they're being used for...

There are no prizes for guessing which blockbuster movie Contamination is taking its inspiration from. Director Luigi Cozzi was told by his producer to make an Italian version of Ridley Scott's Alien, but because of a much smaller budget it came out like this - set on Earth and with considerably less extravagant set dressing (although they do manage a couple of scenes of a Martian cave that looks like a huge mouth and gullet). It's clear that most of the budget went on the effects to make the alien eggs, which are suitably slimy and unpleasant-looking, and on the torso explosions of the victims of the egg goo. Those scenes are also presented in slow-motion, as if seeing someone's chest explode outward and spread viscera is somehow worse when viewed at half speed, but they are cleverly shot, especially in the way that everyone who dies this way is wearing bulky or baggy clothing, the better to hide the equipment used (and in a couple of cases reuse the same footage because several people are wearing identical white jumpsuits). However, these gory deaths only happen at the beginning and very end of the film, leaving the rest of the movie feeling like it could almost be a crime drama about drug smuggling - ironic when you realise that it was these gory scenes that got the film classed as one of the DPP's video nasties and banned in the UK for some years.

There is one other good effect in the film, and that's the giant Martian cyclops overseeing the whole egg operation. Again, he's suitably slimy and alien-looking to be effectively gross, and in fact wouldn't have looked out of place on the set of Invaders From Mars. The only problem is that he wasn't able to move because of mechanical problems, and so just sits there luring victims very slowly to him with a single flashlight eye, before killing them with a "Give Uncle Scrotor a hug!" move.

I have to assume that the low budget also meant that some of the script had to be cut out, as there are some pretty big plot holes to be had in this movie. How did the crew of the cargo ship all die, when there were no traces of the eggs around them and they were all found in the mess hall, far away from the cargo bay? If heat triggers the eggs to "hatch", why destroy them with flamethrowers as Colonel Holmes orders in one scene? And if the villain of the piece has a psychic connection to all the eggs and feels pain when each one is destroyed, then how come his brains didn't just leak out of his head when the warehouse full of eggs gets torched by the afore-mentioned flamethrowers? Ah, but it's spaghetti splatter - such things aren't supposed to be pondered. Instead just sit back and enjoy the cheese. And if you can't do that, enjoy the Goblin score instead.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

 

[rec] (2007)

One of my original plans for the October Horror Movie Challenge was to do an entire month of found footage movies - 31 days of nothing but shakycam, night vision and the possibility of maps being kicked into creeks. Thankfully for the sake of my sanity I eventually decided against it (if for no other reason than it would likely burn even me out on the genre, and I have the Asylum's rip-offs of the Paranormal Activity films, for Eris' sake), but even so I kept a few of them in my final plan - mainly ones I already and and/or I particularly liked. One of those films is today's review, the Spanish-language film [rec].

Angela Videl is a TV reporter doing an on-location episode of a series that follows various night-shift workers to show what their jobs are like. For this episode she and her cameraman have been assigned to a fire station, where they will be shadowing a pair of firemen. They get called out to what seems like a routine call - an old woman is apparently trapped in her apartment and may have hurt herself. When they get there, however, it quickly becomes clear that things are more serious than that as the woman attacks her would-be rescuers, biting a police officer and severely injuring him. They try to get the injured officer to safety but discover that the apartment building has been sealed off and no-one is allowed in or out. As the situation deteriorates further, Angela orders her cameraman to keep filming, to make sure that the story of what happens that night gets out one way or the other - but first they'll have to make sure they survive the night, as whatever was affecting the old woman has started to spread...

There's a scene about 20 minutes or so into [rec] that made me realise that this was going to be a good film. I don't want to spoil it because it's just such a good - and shocking - moment, but I will say that it bears some similarities to the infamous "cut-away dinner scene" from Alien, as none of the actors save one obvious one knew that it was going to happen, making their reactions to it completely genuine. From that point on though, the movie's adrenaline meter is set to 11 and doesn't let up, although it had already started to move up before that, when they first encountered the elderly woman who is quite obviously not well - any audience member who knows how these things go will be instantly suspecting what's up with her, so there's tension as the scene unfolds and we wait for what we know is going to happen.

Whether or not the people infected in [rec] are zombies is an interesting question. Technically, they seem to be suffering from a form of rapid-onset rabies which would put them in the 28 Days Later category of zombies, but as things progress we see that some of them get up after suffering apparently fatal wounds, so any pedants in the audience might find it difficult to classify them. There's also the issue of the film's climax, which seems to suggest a religious cause for all of this (even more so in the sequel, [rec] 2, which just served to make things even more confusing, but that's a different film), and I think that the sudden information dump we get at the film's climax is in fact the weakest part of the film. We don't need to know what's caused this infection, and we certainly don't need a sudden bout of exposition that takes us in a totally new direction just moments after the survivors have run screaming into the last safe place in the building, chased by a half-dozen or so screeching zombies who want to eat at the TV reporter buffet. And even then it doesn't manage to explain everything...

When it comes to the curse of shakycam too, [rec] is a particularly terrible offender, as the whole movie is shot from the perspective of only one camera, and once the shit hits the fan the cameraman is running just about everywhere, and often up and down flights of stairs. Personally, I'm impressed by his cardio. On the other hand, the film does at least answer the other issue that plagues most found-footage films, the "Why are you still filming during all of this?" question. In this case, they're reporters and they want to get this story out one way or the other, and so it makes sense that they'd continue to film despite everything. There's also one beautiful shot where the camera looks down the stairwell from the top floor, and sees several zombies scattered throughout the lower floors, all looking up and snarling at the same time. It's a marvellous moment of mise en scene.

[rec] gave a tremendous jolt of energy to the found-footage genre, which was starting to slow down as the original ideas started drying up, when it came out. It clearly had an effect on the English-speaking movie industry, as they promptly started work on the American remake without even giving the original a general release (it finally got one when the remake, Quarantine, was also released). It's definitely a film that deserves to be seen, either alongside its remake or on its own, though, and is most definitely one of my favourites of the genre.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

 

Related articles

Shivers (1975)

The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

Mulberry Street (2006)

As Above, So Below (2014)

The Paris catacombs are really quite spectacular. Parts of them are hundreds of years old, they're miles long and contain the bones of about six million people (for obvious reasons, an exact census just isn't going to happen). And back in 2004, police discovered a working movie theatre and fully stocked bar, complete with electricity and a full restaurant, and to this day there's no definitive proof as to who was behind it. These things alone would be enough to make a decent horror movie, so it's a little bit confusing as to why there haven't been more of them (aside from, of course, the fact that the French authorities aren't going to let just anyone with a camera and a shooting script wander down there). Regardless, As Above, So Below is one of the very few that have actually been made.

Scarlett is a professor of urban archeology and symbology who is on a quest to find the Philosopher's Stone. Her father had sought the stone before her, and it's implied that he became too obsessed with it and ended up taking his own life. Scarlett looks to be similarly obsessed, risking her life to find clues as to the location of the stone, which lead her to Paris in an attempt to find the spot indicated by the cryptic writings of Nicholas Flamel. Along with a cameraman who is making a documentary on her search and an old friend who reluctantly joins her, they find a trio of guides to take them down into the forbidden areas of the Paris catacombs. As they venture deeper and deeper, however, strange things start to happen to the explorers, and between strange visions and sounds and the dangers of the crumbling tunnels, Scarlett and the others find themselves questioning just what they are headed down towards... and whether it will even be worth it in the end.

As Above, So Below has the unfortunate timing of coming out in the post-Harry Potter world, so that when many people hear that the characters are searching for the Philosopher's Stone, they're probably going to automatically think that it's going to be guarded by a giant three-headed dog called Fluffy. In fact, a three-headed dog would probably be easier to get past than some of the alchemical puzzles that come up during the course of the film, and this is perhaps the film's biggest flaw - it's perhaps just a little bit too smart for its audience. It's one part Dante's Inferno, one part Dan Brown novel but with all the hard words left in, and one part found-footage movie, and to be honest the Venn diagram that connects those three audience groups is going to be a strange-looking one. Because of its time constraints (93 minutes' running time) it doesn't have all that much time to explain everything either - especially the ending, which has left a lot of people scratching their heads, including me, because of its ambiguity.

It's not a bad movie, though, just maybe more challenging than the average horror movie. As Above, So Below comes from the Dowdle brothers, whose previous works have included Devil and the infamous Poughkeepsie Tapes, so they've gotten into the habit of making movies that are more thoughtful (and creepily artistic) than most. Their work is good here, as it has been in general on their previous films (although people are going to be divided about The Poughkeepsie Tapes until the end of time). On the other hand, the film does suffer from that old found-footage malady, the shakycam, and it's a particularly malignant case at that in parts. At least it comes up with a reason for the continued shooting when tunnel walls are collapsing around them and cults and strange stone-like monsters are leaping out to scream at them - they have mini-cameras fitted to their headlamps (which also does its best to solve the lighting problem as well).

Our protagonist, Scarlett, is a little too unbelievably perfect to be truly identifiable with, however. She's young and very pretty but has two Ph.Ds and speaks six languages and she probably saved a small child's life once and taught Elvis how to dance, she's just so cool you guys. She's kind of like Lara Croft but with less of a body count, in fact, and her obsession with finding the Philosopher's Stone makes her do some very questionable things that would make Indiana Jones cry out in horror (smashing a priceless stone tablet in one case and setting fire to a museum piece on the off chance it had a hidden message in another). We're obviously supposed to be seeing her gain something of great value by the end of the film, be it physical, metaphysical or something else, but events don't seem to affect her nearly as much as they should for the harrowing journey she puts herself and the others through. Basically, she's not a very appealing protagonist, as pretty as she may be.

As Above, So Below does at least try to tackle new subjects in horror other than the tired ghosts/zombies/killers in creepy place tropes - I think it's just up to the individual as to whether it succeeds in covering it appropriately enough for the average audience to enjoy.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

 

The Fog (1980)

Of the John Carpenter films we've covered in the past on the site, they've tended to fall into one of two categories. There's the all-out effects and gore and horror movies like The Thing, and there's the more subtle, even thoughtful movies that rely on dread - that's your Prince of Darkness-likes. The Fog most definitely falls into the latter category.

The town of Antonio Bay is celebrating its centenary, and the whole town is preparing for the festivities. While having renovations done on his church, however, the town priest comes across an old diary hidden in the walls which reveals the terrible truth of what happened the night Antonio Bay was born - the town's founding fathers deliberately lit a fire on the beach to draw a ship of lepers looking for a home to wreck itself on the rocks so that they could steal their gold for themselves. Now, 100 years later, a strange fog is rolling in on the town, and those caught within it are meeting gruesome deaths at the hands of ghostly, vengeful lepers. The only people able to try to stop the town from being swallowed up by the fog and its residents meeting a most unpleasant end are the town's DJ in the old lighthouse, and a hitchhiker and her new boyfriend who find themselves investigating the deaths as they occur. Will Antonio Bay survive to see another day, let alone another 100 years, or will the betrayed lepers have their revenge?

The Fog is actually a completely bloodless horror movie. That's not to say that people don't die in it - they do, and nastily at that - but there is no blood shed during the course of the film. The lepers cut into their victims with hooks, cutlasses and other blades, but they never draw any blood, and this makes sense, because the lepers are really just ghosts given form by the fog. their weapons can kill, but they can only leave the same traces that the fog itself would, which is why the victims found all have the symptoms of death by drowning and being immersed in seawater for a long time. It's a very subtle but clever touch that I think should be appreciated more.

The Fog also as not one, but two characters who can be classed as Final Girls - DJ Stevie Wayne, who does her best to keep the town informed of what's going on once the fog rolls in, and Elizabeth Solley, the young hitchhiker who finds herself caught up in events. The two women are played by Adrienne Barbeau and Jamie Lee Curtis respectively (because in the late 70s and early 80s you couldn't go two steps without bumping into a horror movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis, it seems), but The Fog also has 60s scream queen Janet Leigh (Jamie Lee Curtis' mother) as well. Originally, the role of the town priest Father Malone was offered to none other than Christopher Lee as well, but scheduling conflicts meant that that role went to Hal Holbrook instead. As much as I love the late Sir Christopher, I think he would have brought something very different to the role which would have meant for a very different film at the end. However, despite having two heroines in his film, Carpenter still feels he has to bring in a Woodsman - the strong man who comes to the rescue of the erstwhile heroine at the last minute. In this case it's Elizabeth's new boyfriend and town local Nick Castle, and while it doesn't detract from the film, it doesn't stand out in any spectacular way either.

As I mentioned above, The Fog is also a movie that trades on creeping dread rather than shocks and gore. As the success of the Silent Hill computer games show us (or at least the first two), there's something very unnerving about being trapped in thick fog, especially if you know there's something menacing lurking just beyond your field of vision in it. We the audience along with the cast don't even really get a good look at the ghostly lepers until the film's climax - up until that point they've been limited to shadowy figures silhouetted by the luminous fog, which in itself is a creepy visual. the fact that we don't see much of them also helps with the dread, as our minds can fill in the blanks of what we think they might look like.

The Fog is probably not one of John Carpenter's better-remembered films today - especially after the insipid remake in 2005. It's lack of gore and slower-moving plot leaves it overshadowed by the likes of Halloween and The Thing, but it's not a dull film - in fact, as an exercise in slow-building fear it's quite successful.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

 

Cell (2016)

When I originally planned out the movies for this month, The Girl With All The Gifts was not part of the plan - or at the very least, it wasn't planned for yesterday. Things are always subject to change, however, which is why I ended up seeing and reviewing it rather last-minute. When I looked at things this morning, however, I realised that I had managed to set up an interesting situation - two films side-by-side, both based on bestselling books and both featuring pseudo-zombie apocalypses, the second film being Cell - based on the book by Stephen King. The only difference is that one movie was good and the other... mediocre at best. Can you guess which one is which?

Clay Riddell is heading home from Boston after finalizing a deal with publishers for his graphic novel when a mysterious signal passes through every active cellphone, causing anyone using a cellphone at that time to become a violent, mindless "zombie". Barely managing to escape, Clay bands together with a train driver and a teenage girl to try to escape the city and find Clay's estranged wife and son in New Hampshire. As they travel they observe the "phoners" or "phone freaks" flocking and moving in packs and behaving as though they were a hive mind, and start to have disturbing dreams about one in particular in a red hooded sweatshirt who appears to be the leader. After killing a large flock of them while they are "recharging", however, the dreams increase and they find themselves marked because of what they did. Will the survivors be able to outrun the flocks of phone freaks and find their way to a safe zone, and will Clay be able to reunite with his son?

I've always been a fan of John Cusack, from way back when he was in Grosse Point Blank. But apparently, I've still got the image of him in my head from 1997, because when I first saw him in Cell my immediate thought was, "My gods, Cusack's looking old." My second thought was, "And he looks like he's the lead singer of a The Cure tribute band," because with his pale skin, black hair and all-black clothing throughout the movie, he looks very much like an ageing goth. The slightly askew mental imagery continued with the character of Tom McCourt, who is played by Samuel L Jackson. The mental image I'd had of the character from reading the book several years ago was very much at odds with seeing him portrayed by Nick Fury. But this is something to be expected when books are made into movies, and in the end, it doesn't really matter how much they might differ from our preconceived notions as long as they and the rest of the film are still good. And therein lies the problem.

The movie Cell is very different from the book Cell, and the movie suffers for it. Characters and events are changed or removed entirely - in some cases, an argument could be made for brevity, but in other cases, it just damages the plot. The opening scene when the phonepocalypse first hits has been moved from a Boston park to an airport - I'm guessing to be able to showcase the resulting carnage better, but it just ends up being too busy and not altogether believable. Also remember how I mentioned in The Girl With All The Gifts that there are brief moments of animals being killed, but they're done to illustrate a point rather than for shock value? Well, the opposite happens here, and it's just ridiculous. For the rest of the film, you don't really feel that our survivors are in too much danger, as they were lucky enough to find a house full of guns and apparently near-unlimited ammo, and they don't even have to worry about aiming for the head. There's no real tension for most of the film, beyond Clay's determination to find his son, and even the film's attempts to ramp up the stakes don't really succeed because they never really follow up on it or go into detail. The key example of this would be the apparent "leader" of the phone zombies - at one point he's implied to be a creation of Clay's from his graphic novel - but then everyone keeps dreaming of him. Is he real? Is he psychic? Is he in any way going to impact the plot?

The biggest irony comes with the film's ending. The book's ending is very... King-esque, without giving away any spoilers, but a lot of people apparently didn't like it (I personally thought it wasn't too bad). So when King wrote the screenplay for the movie, he changed the ending. Guess what? The new ending was even more disliked, including by me, because it makes no sense and throws away an awful lot of buildup for an ending which goes nowhere. This isn't an argument over whether endings should be upbeat, downbeat or somewhere in the middle; it just doesn't do anything. And I'm not entirely sure if I appreciated the song that plays over the ending, but that might just be a personal issue for me.

It's always disappointing when a book you enjoyed turns out to be a not-so-good film, and this is the case with Cell. Some major distribution problems certainly didn't help it, but in the end, it falls down because it just feels rushed and out-of-focus (much like the camerawork itself which felt strangely low budget for a film like this). This is definitely a case where I'd recommend reading the book over seeing the film.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

 

The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)

It's time for a bit of local flavour with today's review. When they were making The Girl With All The Gifts, they shot some scenes in a disused bus shelter and shopping centre about fifteen minutes from where I live - because apparently when you think post-apocalyptic zombie wastelands, you think of my town (and to be fair, it's not too bad an assessment). They had called for local people to come and be extras in the scenes they were shooting as well - playing zombies, obviously - and I briefly considered going down and trying out. In the end I decided against it though. You very rarely see fat zombies in horror, after all.

Melanie lives underground in a military base. Every day she is strapped into a wheelchair and taken to a classroom with a dozen or so other children like her and taught by teacher Ms Justineau, who Melanie loves. But there's something not quite right about Melanie and the other children - if they smell anything alive - human or animal - they turn feral and want to eat it. They're called "Hungries", humans turned into zombie-like creatures by a fungal infection, and the world is being overrun by them. When the base is overrun by Hungries, Melanie saves Ms Justineau and they and a trio of other survivors, including Dr Caldwell who claims Melanie's brain holds the cure to the fungal infection, head out to try to reach one of the other bases. Outside in the world for the first time, Melanie gets to learn about herself and the world she now lives in, and what the future holds for both her and the others like her, and the remaining uninfected humans...

The Girl With All The Gifts is based on the book of the same name by writer Mike Carey, which I read when it originally came out in 2014 (without knowing anything of the plot; I'm a fan of Carey's comic book work and figured a novel by him would be just as good). So I went into the film knowing everything that was going to happen and so can't really give an opinion on how most of the revelations are handled. I can say, however, that the film reveals most of these things much earlier than in the book, and in some cases in the trailer - the cause of the outbreak and Dr Caldwell's work on a cure, for example. I'm not 100% sure I agree with these plot points being revealed so early on, but at the same time they don't really harm the story and so I guess it's acceptable. It's also quite refreshing to have a zombie plague (yes, they're technically only zombies in the way that 28 Days Later or Mulberry Street had zombies) that has an origin that has some basis in science and nature (it's a mutated version of the cordyceps fungus, which infects ants and other insects in the real world with horrific effects) and which hasn't been used as much as other zombie plague varients, video game The Last of Us notwithstanding.

Another way in which The Girl With All The Gifts differs from the more traditional zombie narrative is the fact that the Hungries are not the driving force of the film. They're an ever-present threat, certainly, and several scenes involve having to creep past them in close quarters, hoping that they won't become alerted to the survivors' scent or sound, but the main drive of the movie is what the world is like now, where it is going and what each of the survivors will do with it. As a result, there's a lot less gore than in your usual zombie film - a few throats get bitten and someone gets their torso completely eaten - but it's much more about the suspense. Oh, and our protagonist Melanie does catch and kill a cat and a bird to eat, but the scenes are very brief and not there to shock or upset the audience with the death of helpless animals, but to illustrate a point that, for all our sympathies towards her, Melanie is still a predator and could be dangerous to her fellow survivors.

The Girl With All The Gifts has quite the impressive cast, including Gemma Arterton and none other than Glenn Close as the pragmatic antagonist Dr Caldwell. However, special mention has to go to the young actress who plays Melanie, Sennia Nanua. Playing a character that is both as simple and as complex as Melanie can't have been an easy task, but Nanua takes the character and really makes her real and sympathetic, from watching her do simple things like open and close a door at will (something she had never experienced in her life on the military base), to being prepared to fight and kill to protect Ms Justineau and the other survivors. Even decisions she makes that we might otherwise balk at, she manages to make more sympathetic and understandable, and if she continues in acting she's going to have a good career ahead of her.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

 

Related articles

Mulberry Street (2006)

Tremors (1990)

Today's movie is good news for anyone who likes to play the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game, as Tremors will surely help to fill in a few more connections (for example: Jurassic Park, Cool as Ice and Prince of Darkness, just to name a few). When I was in my teens, the movie was also one of my favourites to watch whenever I had the time (once I was no longer ten years old and irrationally frightened of it, that is). I wouldn't even call it a guilty pleasure, considering its cult appeal today and how it's become a beloved film of most of those who grew up in the 1990s.

Val (short for Valentine) and Earl are the two handymen for the town of Perfection, Nevada (population: 14 but soon to be dropping rapidly), and they've become well and truly sick of their lives. They decide to pack up and leave Perfection for a bigger town with more opportunities, but unfortunately for them they picked the wrong day to try to leave town. Something unseen has started to stalk the town's residents, leaving a trail of dead cattle, sheep and humans in its wake. Perfection ends up blocked off from the outside world and its residents end up under siege, and it falls to Val and Earl to try to figure a way out of there without them or anyone else being eaten...

Tremors is pure, unadulterated B-movie fun. It's a love letter to the creature feature/giant monster movies of the 1950s and 60s, right down to a brief discussion at one point between characters as to the source of the Graboids which ticks all the usual boxes (radiation, aliens, army experiments) than were usually the cause in those old movies. It's also set in an isolated part of the desert, another nod to those old B-movies... if a giant ant had peered over a hill and waved at the camera at one point I doubt too many people would have been surprised, really. It's not just a b-grade monster movie though - there's the western element as well, obviously, the comedic element and there's even the option to make a comparison to Jaws and similar killer animal movies.

The effects are all practical, of course, which just adds to the icky grossness of the Graboids. the obvious reference that most people will go to when considering the origin of the Graboids is of course the sandworms in Dune, but for those who know their forteana and/or cryptozoology there's also the Mongolian Death Worm to consider. But the filmmakers and special effects guys really worked hard to make the Graboids at least partially plausible - the "hooks" along their bodies that allow them to push themselves through the soft ground and their sensitivity to sound and effective sonar when hunting being the two big points that stand out. And their orange blood adds another touch of the unnatural to it all that makes it just that little more gross.

Kevin Bacon did not have the highest of hopes for Tremors when he made it, and it didn't do all that well in the box office when it came out. It found its audience when it made it to video, however, and is now considered a cult classic in much the same way as films like The Thing and Lifeforce have become. Part of its charm, I think is how it manages to blend horror and humour together so well - the chemistry between Val and Earl, their habit of using Rock-Paper-Scissors to solve every argument or tough decision, is a key example of this. Another high spot is the character of Burt Gummer, played by Michael Gross (and his wife Heather was played by none other than Reba McEntire). Somehow Tremors managed to create the idea of a friendly, likable gun nut and conspiracy theorist, and his popularity is only too clear in the fact that Gummer has stayed around for all of the sequels (they just announced the sixth) and the short-lived TV series as well.

Overall, Tremors is a fun movie. It plays things just straight enough to keep the audience on their toes, while also being full enough of humour to keep people smiling and maybe even soften some of the more horrific moments. It's difficult to come up with criticisms not because it doesn't have anything to criticize, but because any flaws it does have are overshadowed by its enthusiasm and knowingly retro energy.

Amazon UK

Amazon US