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By Ben Bussey and Keri O’Shea

Here at Brutal As Hell, we have at least one bona fide Last House on the Left scholar in our midst: our beloved Nia, who penned a fairly epic tribute to Wes Craven’s breakthrough movie on its 40th anniversary in 2012. However, just to balance things out, the BAH staff also has at least two Last House novices: Keri and myself. Yes, the editors of a site called Brutal As Hell have, until now, been almost totally ignorant of one of the most reputedly brutal films ever made, beyond its reputation.

However, the current UK tour of a rare original print of The Last House on the Left – organised by 35mm devotees Cigarette Burns, and Psychotronic Cinema –  presented a unique opportunity to not only educate ourselves, but hopefully have a viewing experience close to what was originally intended. Here, in brief – and with some spoilers – are our reactions…

Ben: So – this past Saturday night we attended a screening of The Last House on the Left at Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds, second stop of the tour that Cigarette Burns are doing with their rare 35mm print. We should get this out of the way and thereby end our horror cred forever in the eyes of many – it was the first time you’d ever seen it, and only the second time for me.

Keri: Yep – it was one of those films I knew of, could describe the plot and even name the characters, but – I’d never seen it. And, actually, I enjoyed it far more than I was expecting.

Ben: My feelings are quite mixed. It’s notorious for being one of the nastiest, most extreme films ever made – and put in the context of early 70s cinema, the horror genre in particular, it’s not hard to see how it would have been considered that way back then. But I’m not sure if it still has that sort of power today.

Keri: I still felt like it packed a punch – even though it has wildly inept moments throughout, i.e. whenever those cops are on screen. But in terms of indiscriminate, senseless violence, LHOTL certainly delivers – though I accept that I’m probably looking at the film in terms of its place in horror history too.

Ben: For me, it was less disturbing than it was disorienting – and it was absolutely the sudden shifts from wanton cruelty to slapstick buffoonery that did it. The very end, for instance (spoiler warning): Dad’s just chainsawed Krug to death, freeze frame – then end credits set to that comedy Chas & Dave-style music. You can’t help laughing – but it’s not so much from amusement as bewilderment. A genuine WTF moment, of which the film has many.

Keri: Yep, tonally I can’t see that Craven knew what he was doing. Slapstick ordeal horror? Well, that didn’t quite take off…

Ben: Yeah, it’s a very peculiar contrast. It’s one thing for a grueling film to have moments of levity, but this was pushing it. I have to assume it was intended as some sort of pointed effort to further emphasise the cruelty of what Krug and his gang were up to – showing how oblivious the rest of the world was. Maybe that was part of Craven’s Vietnam metaphor; how much of America was blinkering itself to the horror of what was going on. But that’s me rationalising it intellectually, knowing what Craven and umpteen others have said about the film since; as a viewer going in blind I doubt I would have made such an association, and the comedy elements would have just seemed a huge lapse in judgement.

Keri: It must have seemed an odd fish to viewers at the time… I mean, how recent is the common consensus that the film was a commentary on Vietnam? It seems pretty well understood/accepted now. But was it at the time?

Ben: I honestly don’t know. It mostly played flea pits and drive-ins, didn’t it? I can’t imagine it attracted too many high brow dissections on release.

Unless I missed it, I don’t remember them ever directly referring to Vietnam in the movie. Though they do make more explicit reference to the end of flower power, what with the girls going to see a band called Blood Lust, and the mother saying, “I thought you were supposed to be the love generation? What’s with all the violence?” Or words to that effect. Obvious Alice Cooper reference there too – the mother mentions chickens being killed onstage, I think.

Keri: Dr. Collingwood mentions ‘being in the barracks’, though it’s not clear for which conflict – could easily have been World War II, considering he looks to be in his fifties. I always wonder how much these social commentary ideas develop over time, rather than being purposeful.

That said, I did think that Phyllis’ near-escape and then how she’s cut down in a cemetery – where others have had decent burials but where she will not – is telling. That could relate to a lost generation. Like, the old rules or ways of doing things surrounding death had to be forgone in Vietnam – no headstone, nothing. But then, again, is that me making that fit with the film? That’s one of the issues around dissecting films of this nature, I guess!

Ben: I get your point. And yeah, I do wonder sometimes if having an interest in film history is actually a hindrance in approaching some films, because it keeps you from engaging on a basic viewer level. I don’t mean that as a slur on less informed viewers, but rather that we should be able to engage with a film on our own terms – and on the film’s own terms for that matter. However, with something like Last House, we’re immediately considering its role in bridging the gap between Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chain Saw Massacre, ushering in the new era of horror; we’re immediately relating it to the later works of Wes Craven and producer Sean Cunningham. (Heh, I said ‘I get your point’…)

Keri: Nice work! * But yes, it can be hard to disengage horror genre mode – and just watch the damn film…

Ben: Staying in horror genre mode – it is interesting to note the differing paths Craven and Cunningham went on to take, notably in creating the two dominant horror franchises of the 80s in Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Cunningham’s franchise was just pure blood and sensationalism, whilst Craven’s was more interested in the subtle nuances of terror, and symbolism. Last House could, I suppose, be said to balance those elements.

Keri: Yeah I guess so – LHOTL was where two different disciplines got going. It’s notably not a bloody film, either – a bit like Texas Chain Saw. You assume it’s grisly, but it’s assumption only.

Ben: That said – I gather it wasn’t an uncut version we saw, nor was it uncut when I saw it however-many years ago. I’ve seen clips which showed intestines being pulled out, and that moment definitely wasn’t in there.

Keri: Ah, yes, I remember you saying about this on the night… Still, considering the screentime many slashers dedicate to gore, it’s still a case of less is more generally. (Slashers as an example of what followed, of course.)

Ben: It’s more about the psychological cruelty. I don’t think it has quite that same relentless heart-thumping quality that Chain Saw has – but I think it tops it in sheer mean-spiritedness.

Keri: ‘Mean spirited’ is a good description.

Ben: I mean, the one really horrible moment that sticks in my head is Krug saying “piss your pants.”

Keri: Yeah – humiliating someone, that always has more of an impact than anything else. And of course Hess does it so well.

Ben: Oh yeah. Again falling into horror geek mode (kinda hard not to, what can I say), one can sort of see the roots of Craven’s Freddy Kruger there, in that for all his repulsiveness there’s something strangely, unnervingly compelling and attractive about him. (Plus the fact that the name ‘Kruger’ was indeed derived from ‘Krug.’ Dig that, trivia fans.)

Keri: Gravitas, definitely. And then he went on to more or less play the same role again in The House on the Edge of the Park, so he cornered the market there.

Ben: And of course he did the music too – the gentler, more haunting stuff as well as the comedy Chas & Dave number. The soundtrack seems to have almost as big a cult reputation as the film itself in recent years.

Keri: It was cool to see a LHOTL merch stall at the cinema! There’s something so cool about incongruous horror soundtracks. I’ve been humming ‘The Road Leads to Nowhere’ for days…

Ben: I thought it was ‘the road to nowhere ends in Leeds…’ Thank you, I’m here all week. But seriously, I agree! Far better than the crash-bang-wallop soundtracks we so often get nowadays; soothing music against horrific material can have such an eerie effect.

Alas we’re running low on time, so we best wrap this up simply: when all ‘s said and done, did you like Last House on the Left?

Keri: I did. I thought it had more going on than I’d anticipated, and above all else it was great to see the film as it was intended – a late night screening at a cinema, so kudos to Cigarette Burns for making it so.

Ben: Agreed. Getting to see a film from a pre-video era in its original format, and on a big screen, is a sadly rare treat these days, and one we should embrace when the opportunity arises. While my feelings remain mixed about the film itself, I’m definitely grateful for the experience.

Keri: Amen to that!

Cigarette Burns’ Last House on the Left tour continues with screenings at Duke of York’s, Brighton on the 13th September; Cameo, Edinburgh on the 18th; the Showroom, Sheffield on the 23rd (in association with Celluloid Screams); and the GFT in Glasgow on the 30th.

* If you think this is childish, you should have heard how loudly we sniggered when the end credits revealed the father was played by an actor named ‘Gaylord.’

By Nia Edwards-Behi

Twenty five years have passed since Shinya Tsukamoto unleashed his hellish vision of society on us, in the form of his techno-body horror masterpiece Tetsuo. Arguably the ur-film of Japanese body horror, Tetsuo rightly stands the test of time to remain eerily relevant and one of the finest abstract horror films ever made.

It took me a while to get round to Tetsuo. For a while my first and only experience of Japanese body horror was the wonderfully baffling Meatball Machine. Then followed a modern classic, in the form of Machine Girl, closely followed by the experience of sleeping through Tokyo Gore Police because it was midnight and directly after I’d just been traumatised by Martyrs (ah, festivals…). I eventually got around Tetsuo and its ‘sequel’ Body Hammer on DVD at home and boy, did it blow my mind. Not long after I also saw the other ‘sequel’, Bullet Man, which I’ve previously reviewed here.

While both sequels are enjoyable enough (caveat on Bullet Man, it’s enjoyable if you can get past the terrible English dialogue), neither comes quite close to recreating the sheer visceral power of Tetsuo: The Iron Man. The film is brief – its longest cut only 77 minutes long, the standard version only 67 – but it does more in that time than most 90+ minute films come close to. It’s a short, sharp smack right in the face, for sure, one which leaves you reeling and wondering if you might have just nodded off and had one hell of a nightmare.

A synopsis barely does the film justice. The film opens with the Metal Fetishist (played by Tsukamoto himself), a man digging into his thigh with a metal rod. When he notices maggots in the festering wound he screams and runs wild, and is hit by a car. The driver of the car, a salaryman (Tomorowo Taguchi), and his girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara), dump the Metal Fetishist’s body and leave him for dead. The Salaryman’s life is irreversibly changed, however, as throughout the film his body slowly transforms, his flesh and bones metamorphosing into scraps of metal. He encounters two others made of metal, namely a madwoman who chases him through the streets and his girlfriend in a humiliating dream sequence. Finally, he meets the Metal Fetishist again, and a final battle leads to surprising results.

If that sounds utterly bonkers, well, it is. A plot like that doesn’t work without the brazen, raw, exhausting style of its telling. Made entirely in black and white, and shot on 16mm, the film’s look removes it far from any semblance of ‘realism’. Incorporating stop-motion animation, rapid editing, expressionist performances and a truly discordant industrial soundtrack by Chu Ishikawa results in a brain-melting experience. Ishikawa’s masterful soundtrack brings everything else together and is one of my favourite things about the film, all clanging sounds and incessantly driving beats. Tetsuo’s the sort of stylistic mish-mash that needs to be experienced to be believed.

Of course, Tetsuo isn’t all about its incomprehensible plot and imagery, even if that is the main appeal. Like body horror across any national filmmaking context, the film abstractly deals with human crisis, psychological conflict or trauma manifest on the body. In the case of Japanese body horror, sometimes referred to as Japanese cyberpunk, this is intrinsically linked with issues of industry and technology. I won’t pretend to be an expert on Japanese history and society, but given the extremely rapid growth of the Japanese economy post-WW2, and the importance of manufacturing, technological developments and corporate rule, it’s little surprise that such industrial concerns emerge in its art. It’s no mistake that the protagonist of Tetsuo is a salaryman, a stereotype figure known for his mundane loyalty to work. The Salaryman becomes the Iron Man, his body as industrialised as his mind – but crucially, by doing so he is freed, and is able to rebel against that which otherwise constrains him. A crisis of masculinity is central to that metamorphosis too, I think, with the immediate narrative contrast of dream sequence Girlfriend and the mechanical penis extreme evidence of that. One of the film’s strongest assets is Kei Fujiwara, who not only plays the Salaryman’s girlfriend – her performance in the dream sequence is surely the spiritual heir to mechanical Maria’s dance in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis – but she also shared camera duties with Tsukamoto.

The human body in crisis is always going to be a relevant theme to explore in art, and horror’s one of the best places to do that. Tsukamoto’s exploration of the fine line between body, soul, work and industry is still remarkably topical today. Though we might now be more concerned with issues of surveillance and living in the Cloud and bitcoins or whatever, the physical human body, in relation to these, remains in crisis. I think if Tsukamoto were to revisit Tetsuo once again issues of surveillance and our increasingly virtual existence would be the way forward. At the end of The Iron Man the Salaryman and the Metal Fetishist seem to resolve to turn the world to rust. But at least if we’re made of iron, we’re still made of something, right?

By Quin

While I am certainly no expert on psychology, I have read a little about an occurrence in the human mind, where something that is traumatic and terrifying at a young age will become attractive later in life. I think this says a lot about why some of us are drawn to horror films. It seems like everyone I know has a story about the time they watched that one movie when they were way too young that scarred them for life. But by the same token, quite a few of us have turned that scarification into the motivation that drives our hunger to find the thing that will scare us the most. Like we want to get the feeling back that we experienced as a kid.

My own personal story about watching things I shouldn’t have goes back to when I was in Kindergarten. I guess I was about 5, and my parents had a VHS copy of An American Werewolf in London. I knew I had to see it, but I also knew that I probably shouldn’t. Even at 5 I think I was aware of the consequences. But I was a smooth talker and I convinced a babysitter to put it on for me. I made it to the dream sequence in the forest and ran from the room crying. (Frankly, I’m shocked I made it through the initial attack on the moors, I guess I was tougher than I thought.) Following that instance, I lost sleep over everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It got so bad that I knew horror movies weren’t for me and I didn’t like to be scared. I decided sometime in 1985 that I would never watch another scary movie again. This lasted until sometime around 1988 when I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street on television. I was amazed to find that it didn’t scare me at all. I guess I got a little cocky, thinking that watching edited mainstream horror with commercial breaks actually meant something. Little did I know, about a year later, I would see the movie that to this day is still the scariest thing I’ve ever seen – Pet Sematary.

First let me clarify, I have seen thousands of horror films as of now. So when I say that Pet Sematary is the scariest, I mean that comparatively and within the context of which I saw it. It was 1989, I was 12 years old, and the conditions were perfect for me to be emotionally destroyed by that movie. Also, I was still young and innocent enough to not have a way of defending myself against its dark and complicated themes.

Pet Sematary is the film based on the book of the same name. Like almost all stories by Stephen King, it takes place in Maine. Specifically, it is set in a small town called Ludlow, which is the same town in which Stephen King’s The Dark Half takes place. King has spent almost his entire career as a writer in Maine, with the exception of a stint in Colorado, which is where he wrote The Shining. It’s very common for writers to draw from their personal lives to fill in the details of their stories. Pet Sematary may be one of the best examples of this. So many of the things that happen in the story actually happened to Stephen King, without all of the supernatural stuff and the main climax of the film. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, I’ll get to that in a sec.

The Creed family have just moved from Chicago to Ludlow so Dr. Louis Creed can begin woking at the University of Maine as the head physician of campus health services. Across the road lives the old Jud Crandall, played by the great Fred Gwynn in a brilliant performance that puts Herman Munster out of your mind completely. He and Louis become very close over the course of the film. Early in the film, Jud warns Louis about the road they live on. It’s actually a highway that sees the occasional big rig tearing through with a truck driver behind the wheel hopped up on speed. Jud feels the need to mention the danger of the highway since the Creeds have two young children and a cat named Winston Churchhill. The next Day, Jud takes the family on a short hike to the pet cemetery. It’s a crudely made resting place – so crude that the sign provides the title’s misspelled word. This cemetery is a place for beloved pets who have died in the area dating back generations, some of which were killed on the road. Things start to get weird for Louis Creed right away. His first day on the job at the college, a student is hit by one of those trucks. Louis works to save him, but the guy doesn’t make it. This leads to Louis having dreams about the kid, or is he actually haunting him? Not only does he serve as a warning for Louis, but he is also foreshadowing personified for the viewer.

As you might guess, tragedy eventually strikes twice for the Creed family. First the family cat is killed in the road. This happens while Louis is home alone. Jud decides to let him in on a little secret. Just beyond the pet cemetery, past a deadfall, is a Micmac indian burial ground. Jud leads him there so he can bury the cat, telling him, “I’d help ya, but ya gotta do it yourself. Each buries his own.” That night, Jud tells Louis not to tell anyone what they did preaching the eerie sentiment, “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier.” It doesn’t take long for Louis to realize that Church is back from the dead, only he isn’t quite the same. He smells bad and is much more irritable than before. Louis begins to think he may be going crazy. Jud tells him the story of the time he buried his dog spot in the burial ground, “A man doesn’t always know why he does things, Louis.” But when Louis asks him if anyone has ever buried a person up there, he emphatically tells him no. Well, when tragedy strikes again, Louis does the only thing he can.

It’s the start of what looks like a beautiful day. The Creeds, along with their friend Jud, are having a picnic in the yard. Some conversation, laughter and kite flying turn into the unimaginable when the Creeds’ young son Gage stumbles after his kite into the road just as a truck approaches. Gage is killed instantly. We see his father scream in anguish and horror, as a small bloody sneaker skips in slow motion across the screen. What is a grieving father to do? He has been given the option of cheating death out of taking anything he loves. Yes, he makes the choice to bury Gage just beyond the pet cemetery. Gage comes back. But much like Church, Gage isn’t himself. People start to die and a chain of events is now in motion where Louis cannot make any more good decisions.

As I mentioned before, the themes at play in Pet Sematary are so dark and disturbing, it’s almost a miracle the book was ever written and that the film was made. Stephen King was so afraid he had crossed a line with this story that he put it away for five years before his wife Tabitha finally convinced him that the story was great and needed to be published. As horrible as the death of a child is, the story goes even deeper at reminding the viewer of their own mortality. With the tagline SOMETIMES DEAD IS BETTER in mind, the movie presents us with imagery that shows us how horrifying getting sick can be. Shortly after the first visit to the Pet Sematary, Louis and his wife Rachel have an argument over how to talk to their daughter about death. Rachel is of the opinion that she is too young and it shouldn’t be discussed. What follows is an emotional but deeply spine-chilling flashback that explains why Rachel feels the way she does. When she was a young girl, her older sister Zelda had become sick with Spinal Meningitis. One afternoon she was left to care for her alone as her parents went away for the day. Her sister had become so physically twisted and mentally insane, she could no longer feed herself or move and she looked like the stench of death. As Rachel feeds her mushy, gelatinous goo, easy enough for her to try to swallow, Zelda begins to choke. She writhes as her mouth opens to reveal the goo and her black tongue. Her eyes roll back. As Rachel explains in a voice-over, “They’ll say I murdered her by choking. They’ll say, “you hated her”… and that was true.”

Zelda represents the fear of death. The death of Gage has always been troubling to me. And I couldn’t even imagine what the imagery in this film could do to a parent. But for me, Zelda was the thing that haunted my nightmares for a very long time. It got so bad that I couldn’t even say the word Zelda. I couldn’t even think of the letter Z without her boney, sunken face flashing through my mind. It was entirely by accident one day years later, I was watching Ramones videos on youtube and I ran across the music video for “Pet Sematary” – the title track on the soundtrack – as the video goes through clips from the film, it gets to a quick shot of Zelda with her hands up near her face, laughing. I saw it and felt this burst of adrenaline. My heart started to pound. After all these years I couldn’t believe I saw her again. When the anxiety began to die down, I decided to take another look. I had no more adrenaline and I was no longer frightened. I laughed.

In the last 5 years or so, a special edition DVD of Pet Sematary was released. It includes a widescreen transfer of the film, a behind the scenes documentary as well as commentary with the director Mary Lambert. Since I was no longer afraid, I bought it immediately. I’ve now watched it at least half a dozen times. I can now look at it more critically. While the story is great (the script was adapted by Stephen King himself), some of the acting is terrible. Fred Gwynn is superb, as is the young Miko Hughes who plays Gage. But Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby as the Creeds are positively wooden. The young Ellie Creed is played by twin sisters and she delivers many of her lines like she’s in a school play. The direction of the film goes back and forth between made-for-TV-esque melodrama and taut, chilling horror with gorgeous country scenery. The film gets a big thumbs up for looking almost exactly how you imagine it when you read the book as well as following the story remarkably close. For me, I can forgive the acting that goes wrong in places.

Fortunately, this is one of those films that makes its way through the rumor mill every year or so, with reports that it is going to be remade. I know that hardcore horror fans turn up their noses at remakes as much as new “found footage” films, but Pet Sematary is a remake that I would welcome with open arms. I would love to see someone else’s interpretation of it. I would also welcome the possibility of being scared all over again by an updated version that is more stylized. I’m not going to lie. If it ever gets made, I will be nervous as hell to see it. But I will see it no matter what. Until then, my fears are buried just beyond the deadfall, waiting to return.

By Ben Bussey

See that dazed, weary, numb-with-disbelief look on the faces of those two fine-looking gentlemen in the picture above? How many of us are wearing an almost-identical expression on realising that Shaun of the Dead was released on this date TEN WHOLE YEARS AGO?

Okay, let me follow up that question with another question. How do we define a ‘game-changer?’ On what basis do we deem a movie to have had so indelible an impact on the cultural consciousness that it has well and truly changed the game? As clear as the meaning of that term should be, I’ve found it can be a little divisive, particularly when it comes to the past decade or so – and movies which not everyone is necessarily fond of. See, on the one hand, to declare a movie a game-changer isn’t necessarily a guarantor of quality. Whether we like it or not, Saw, Hostel, Grindhouse, and the remakes of The Ring and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre all changed the game for horror thus far this century, in that they set a format which a slew of other filmmakers were able to duplicate, largely dominating the genre landscape in recent memory. Whether or not any of those films actually broke new ground, or was even necessarily good… well, that’s open to debate.

Naturally, then, many of us would prefer to judge the game changed only by films which truly raise the bar; not just movies which present an easily imitable/marketable template, but those which fine-tune its specific subgenre to as near perfection as possible, preferably introducing hitherto unseen elements in the process, resulting in something designed not simply to make back its budget on opening weekend, but to do what movies are really supposed to do: be loved, obsessed over, and endlessly revisited, with new rewards to be found with each repeat viewing.

I imagine I’m preaching to the choir here when I say that, by either definition, Shaun of the Dead is an inarguable game-changer – and on several counts. It changed the game for horror, and comedy, and British cinema overall. Not bad for a film with such a silly pun for a title which was the big screen debut of some people who made a sitcom.

Now, I have to make a confession – I wasn’t a Spaced fan when Shaun of the Dead came out. I tend to be a bit behind the curve when it comes to TV, and in that era before the internet had quite taken over, the buzz around the show just hadn’t built so much. I think I’d caught one or two episodes in passing, but at the time I honestly just didn’t get it; it wasn’t until I’d seen Shaun that I tracked the series down, paid attention, and realised how great it was. Honestly, I don’t think I’m too unique in this. The way Spaced is held up today as a British TV comedy classic kind of feels to me like how everyone and their dog loves Thor and Iron Man now, and acts like they were always their favourite superheroes -when really, the wider audience was utterly unfamiliar with them before the movies (not judging, just stating a quite clear fact). But anyway, given my relative unfamiliarity with Wright, Pegg and Frost beforehand, I didn’t necessarily go into Shaun of the Dead the first time with unusually high expectations – as I may have since gone into, say, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Paul and The World’s End…

Okay, now a word of warning to those who haven’t seen Shaun of the Dead: first off, what the hell have you been doing the last decade; secondly, there will be spoilers ahead, as I do my best to break down all the ways that this film truly changed the game…

First off – for a movie whose title is an unabashed play on ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (even opening to music lifted directly from said film) it’s notable that no one ever makes explicit reference to George A Romero’s magnum opus. Indeed, Shaun of the Dead makes a point of keeping use of “the Z-word” itself to a minimum, uttered only a handful of times in the whole film. This might not seem like such a big deal now, but back in 2004 the aftertaste of the Scream trilogy – and worse yet, the first two Scary Movies – still hung heavy in the horror psychosphere (why yes, I have been watching True Detective). Now, I don’t have any great issue with the first two Screams, but the problem with that whole era of the genre was there seemed to be some unspoken, collective agreement among filmmakers that the proper way of making an intertextual reference was to have characters say, “yo, this is just like that bit in [insert movie here], y’all!” ad infinitum…

Happily, Shaun of the Dead does away with all that crap. Yes, there are of course nods aplenty to umpteen zombie movies, but only those who really know the genre are going to pick up on them: I’m happy to say I noticed the restaurant called Fulci’s on first viewing, but I’m astonished that it took me several viewings to pick up on the significance of the name chosen for Shaun’s mum, even when Nick Frost yells, “we’re coming to get you, Barbara!” Much as the likes of The Cabin in the Woods and You’re Next have done since, Shaun of the Dead plays around with the conventions of a horror subgenre without really spelling out in black at white that this is what it’s doing (as Scream and its imitators had done). Theoretically, this approach opens the film up to a far broader audience, as – while prior genre knowledge may enhance the viewing experience – it doesn’t hurt a bit if the viewer has never seen another zombie movie. No doubt this makes Shaun of the Dead a terrific entry point for young or otherwise fledging genre fans.

Speaking of younger viewers… I can vividly recall reading an interview with Wright, Pegg and Frost prior to the film’s release in which they spoke with total certainty of their anticipated 18 certificate, declaring they knew the Resident Evil film was going to be crap as soon as they saw it got a 15. Lo and behold, Shaun of the Dead also got a 15, and I’ve often wondered whether or not it’s a point of pride for the filmmakers that their film would also seem to represent some fairly substantial advances regarding what is deemed acceptable within that certificate. There’s no greater evidence that they were aiming high ratings-wise than Nick Frost’s immortal, “can I get any of you cunts a drink?” uttered within the first minute or so. Time was, even a single use of the dreaded C-word guaranteed you an 18 immediately. And that’s to say nothing of the hideous gut-ripping violence on display; okay, so Shaun of the Dead is hardly one of the goriest films ever made, but Dylan Moran’s Captain Rhodes-esque demise would, again, have been solid 18 material in years gone by. While the credit should also be shared with earlier surprisingly gory 15s like Cabin Fever and Dog Soldiers, Shaun definitely blew the door wide open (as wide open as Moran’s torso, indeed) on how much blood and innards you could spill in the presence of those still too young to drink, smoke, vote or boink. As well as allowing them to hear the word ‘cunt.’

Much as it impacted the British Board of Film Classification, so too did Shaun of the Dead make its presence felt in British cinema overall. While it may seem relatively low budget, by UK standards Shaun of the Dead is a major mainstream production: you only need to see the names Universal, Working Title and StudioCanal attached to realise that. And the great thing is, in spite of its obviously fantastical premise, Shaun of the Dead presents us with a vision of life in Britain which I daresay is far closer to the reality the majority of us know than most of cinema Britain has produced in the last two decades.

So often with British film it feels like there’s no middle ground: either it’s the upper-middle class affluence of Richard Curtis (clearly parodied here by the appropriation of Hugh Grant’s “fuck-a-doodle-doo”), or the painfully bleak kitchen sink realism of Ken Loach, with Guy Ritchie’s mockney gangster dreamland falling somewhere alongside. Shaun of the Dead instead presents a simple, mundane, sleepy British existence, neither drowning in desperation nor sailing by at the top of the ladder. (And perhaps most refreshing of all for a film that takes place in the capital, there isn’t a single London landmark in sight.) This, of course, is not to say the film doesn’t tackle head-on the very real anxieties facing the British working class. It is of course no coincidence that the zombies attack at the very moment that Shaun needs to be woken out of his stupor, change his pub-bound lifestyle, move on in his relationship with Liz, and find more fulfilling work.

Nor is it any coincidence that the film also sees Shaun’s mother and stepfather so painfully torn out of his life, with both the regretful final words of Bill Nighy’s Philip and the truly brutal death scene of Penelope Wilton’s Barbara taking the film to unexpected heights of raw emotion. There’s nothing like the loss of your elders to really bring into focus how limited all this is, leaving you ultimately with two basic options: sink, or swim. Liz pretty much says it all in one line: “If I don’t do something, I’m going to end up going into that pub every night for the rest of my life like the rest of those sad old fuckers, drinking myself to death and wondering what the hell happened.” As for what happens should you fail to move on from that point – The World’s End explores that pretty unflinchingly.

Ah – but now that I’ve finally brought up Liz, it’s time to admit that Shaun of the Dead is not without its problems. Revisiting the film now, it comes as a surprise to see that Nick Frost does not get his expected second billing in the credits, his name only coming after Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield and Lucy Davies (to be fair, it seems they quite reasonably billed Pegg first, then went alphabetically). The fact that I struggle to think of anything else I’ve seen Ashfield in – though Davies popped up in the wonderful Some Guy Who Kills People, of course – underlines the key flaw of the film: the weakness of the female characters. To be fair to Wright and Pegg, they’ve both long since admitted they struggle writing decent parts for women, which might explain the comparative sausage fests that are Hot Fuzz and The World’s End. While the romance between Shaun and Liz may be intended to give the film its heart (they sold it as a ‘rom-zom-com,’ remember) it’s just never felt entirely convincing to me; Pegg and Ashfield just don’t seem to have the kind of intimate chemistry to make you believe they’re in love. Or maybe that’s just to do with the way they chose to handle it; I mean, how many rom-coms can you think of in which the central couple never so much as kiss? (One little peck in the last scene notwithstanding.)

Of course, one person with whom Pegg most definitely did have that kind of chemistry was his Spaced collaborator Jessica Hynes (still Stevenson at the time) – and given the obvious debt that he, Wright and Frost owe her, it’s little wonder they chose to give her a cameo. Alas, this too is also one of the most niggling moments for me, for Hynes’ brief appearances are the only moments which really take us out of the story and into self-indulgent in-jokery, the worst offender being the midway scene on the way to The Winchester, with its little who’s-who of British comedy. Sure, it’s a harmless enough throwaway gag, but even as someone who didn’t watch Spaced at the time, this sequence rubbed me up the wrong way on first viewing, and always grates on me a little since.

Speaking of unsung women – Nira Park. In my ignorance, I’ve never had enough of an idea of what a producer really does to assess her contribution, but she’s been part of the Wright/Pegg/Frost dream team from day one, and surely deserves a major shout-out for helping it all happen.

Anyway, forget the chicks! Shaun of the Dead, as we’re all well aware, is one of the quintessential representations of that 21st century phenomenon, the bromance. As much as the movie might purport to build toward Shaun’s reconciliation with Liz, we all know the real crescendo is his ultimate reunion with Ed, to the heart-tugging notes of Queen’s ‘You’re My Best Friend.’ I’m sure the homoerotic undertones of Pegg and Frost’s on-screen partnership will be endlessly debated for as long as their films are appreciated, but whichever way you look at it there’s just no question that they’re one of the great screen double acts. As we’ve all long since noticed, any horror comedy that has arrived since will invariably seek to be compared to Shaun of the Dead, and it’s no wonder so many attempt a similar male buddy set-up, from the successful (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil), to the not-so successful (Lesbian Vampire Killers).

Indeed, as demonstrated by the somewhat lamentable Lesbian Vampire Killers (or, as it was hilariously retitled in the US, Vampire Killers), Shaun of the Dead opened a new window with low budget British filmmakers: now, they can do laddish comedy/horror crossovers, as well as bargain basement Guy Ritchie knock-offs. Is that harsh? Perhaps, but I don’t think it’s too wide of the mark. Sure, some good horror-comedy crossovers have come out of the UK and Ireland post-Shaun – Grabbers, Cockneys vs. Zombies, and recently Stalled – but I daresay these are by far outweighed by the pale imitations of which Lesbian Vampire Killers (a movie which Danny Dyer turned down) is merely the highest profile offender. I won’t name and shame the worst of them, but by God there’s some shit out there. Happily though, Shaun of the Dead has also inspired some remarkable feats from unexpected places: if you haven’t seen Cuban zom-com Juan of the Dead, you’ve missed a genuine treat.

Okay, I realise that by now Spaced’s Tim Bisley would have long since muttered ‘skip to the end’ – so, even though I could quite easily keep droning on and on about all the things that make Shaun of the Dead one of the greatest films of our time, I should probably draw this to a close. But the fact that I could quite easily find tons more to say on the subject just underlines one of my earlier points: Shaun of the Dead is a film which warrants obsessing over, so heavily laden with little details that you really do find new and interesting things popping out every time you see it, no matter how frequent those repeat viewings might be. It firmly established its core players as being among the best in the business, and a decade on they’re all still at the top of their game, making big movies that play to a big audience, but never losing sight of that vital emphasis on genuine wit, character, storytelling, relatability and emotional honesty that makes their breakthrough film such an endless joy. How’s that for a slice of fried gold, indeed.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

Put two horror fans in the same room as each other and they’ll undoubtedly find countless films to collectively gush over, sharing their love for a broad and persevering genre until the cows come home. Give a whole bunch of horror fans internet access and conventions and film festivals and you’ll end up with what’s generally known as ‘the horror community’, a whole bunch of different people with a shared love for horror coming together to squeal and shout about the films they love. Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? Before those horror fans light a campfire and start singing kumbaya, though, the idiomatic cows do, indeed, come home, and suddenly, someone likes a film that someone else doesn’t. The great joy of any community of fans is the variety of opinion that emerges once the shared interests have been established.

It’s fair to say that one of the most contentious issues to arise in the horror community in the past five years is that of Women in Horror. I capitalise the phrase there because obviously women have always been around in horror; however, as a purposeful and organised movement, it has only recently emerged. Back in February 2010, the first Women in Horror Recognition Month took place, a grassroots campaign that I’m happy to say I was a part of. I’m one of those apparently rare beings who came to love horror relatively late in life, and my love for the genre flourished much alongside my time at university studying film. So while in 2009 the first early whisperings of Women in Horror Recognition Month were taking place, so I was writing essays about Last House on the Left, Paul Leni and Men, Women and Chainsaws.

Events as part of the campaign mostly took place in North America, and I wanted to bring part of the energy and enthusiasm to the UK so I put on my own event, Ghouls on Film, where I screened some horror films by women; little realising at the time the significance of world premiering Dead Hooker in a Trunk, I might add. Given that forty people showed up to this entirely independent, not very widely advertised, barely a big name in sight event was, to me, testament that there was interest in seeing some cool horror films specifically made by women.

The campaign has grown and grown in the past five years, with vocal support from those involved and those who have benefitted the most. The voices of those who found such a campaign irrelevant, unnecessary or somehow downright offensive have also understandably grown since 2010. Like Women in Horror Recognition Month or dislike it, there’s no denying the visibility and significance of the campaign, officially and unofficially.

What was and is the purpose of the campaign? Quite simply, to use the 28 days (get it?) of February as a concentrated way of celebrating and drawing attention to women working in the horror industry, and in doing so draw attention to the apparent under-representation of women in the field. This is something that had immediately appealed to me, as I was relatively new to the genre at the time and looking for more people a bit more like me who were passionate and involved in the field. I might add in the same breath, though, that I’m very lucky to have known some great women involved with horror from the outset, academically, industrially and as fans. When you’re still getting the ‘ew, horror’ and ‘but you’re a girl!’ reactions to telling people you’re a horror fan, though, the more important a feeling of sort of safety-in-numbers can be.

I suppose what the campaign doesn’t seem to have achieved, however, it to bring that aim to more mainstream attention. Sure, we can discuss Women in Horror Recognition month on our blogs and niche websites and know exactly who and what we’re talking about, but outside of that arena? Not so much – one need only see the Guardian’s salivating over Ben Wheatley with barely a mention of Amy Jump as evidence of that (not conclusive evidence admittedly, as the spectre of auteurism hanging heavy on British film criticism is a factor there too). I don’t think that this is necessarily a fair ‘criticism’ of the campaign; given its grassroots beginnings, that it has already grown so much is a real achievement. The campaign proper might seem to be groups of familiar names discussing familiar topics and supporting upcoming filmmakers – which is, I strongly note, commendable – but its greatest achievement is precisely what seems to also cause the most trouble: it gets people talking.

Yes, there are criticisms to be made of the campaign proper, from complaints about the timing of the campaign, to the way in which it’s run, to the fact it’s completely unnecessary. I’m not going to fully articulate the main complaints about WiHRM here because frankly I’m well aware there are queues and queues of people who are willing to do that – and have already done that – for me. But the criticisms have been broader than a few clashes of character during the month of February; they’ve extended to criticisms of the broader vocal support for female filmmakers in the genre that happens all year round. If this has been the case previously, it has been increasingly the case over the past five years, presumably due to the success of WiHRM in bringing attention to the issue. Again, some of these criticisms are perfectly valid; however, from my perspective at least, a great deal of the mud slung has been bitter and illogical. It is, though, natural that the increase should be noticeable, given, as I’ve said, the increase in people just plain talking about the issues at hand – and I’m not for a second saying that people shouldn’t be talking about it, whatever their point of view.

There’s no denying that the Soska Sisters and the relative success of American Mary became quite the focal point for clashing opinions (clashes I very purposefully stayed far away from at the time). While for some, the Soskas were and are horror’s brightest new stars, for many others their self-promotion and public personas were entirely objectionable. It seems to me that their success is not that much different from, say, the success of Adam Green with Hatchet, and his own public persona and interaction with fans. Yet – and by all means, I’m open to be corrected on this – I don’t remember the same backlash to his popularity. I’m by no means going to sit here and type under some self-illusion that I’m an unbiased commentator; however, given the ultimately niche nature of the kind of films we’re discussing here, what filmmaker wouldn’t shout as loudly as they could about a film that breaks out of that niche, even if only slightly? With American Mary’s relative success, the Soskas became figureheads for both sides of the debate. As a result, for me, many of the cracks in the naysayers’ side of the debate started to show more clearly. That prominent bloggers can argue that women filmmakers who ‘dress sexily’ and complain about not being treated equally are asking for such treatment speaks volumes of their lack of understanding of most of the issues that still need addressing in the debate.

While it’s true that the on-screen representation of female characters in horror has vastly improved throughout the decades, with women often overcoming the horror, or being the horror themselves, that’s not to say it’s without problems. My eyes grow strained from rolling at DVD cover after DVD cover that use a woman’s body to sell the film in a way which has absolutely zero relation to the content of the film, or, sometimes, when it does. Representation on screen is only part of the problem, of course, with the much greater issue being representation off-screen; that is, in the industry. Now, again this is a situation which has seen a great deal of improvement: I can easily reel off a list of names of women in the horror film industry with whom I’ve had even the slightest involvement in the past year. I can’t deny that I’m very proud to have been able to boast four films directed by women at last year’s Abertoir, as well as having been asked to be part of the great Women in Horror calendar alongside a great number of other talented women. However, much in line with the film industry as a whole – hell, much in line with industry, and business and, you know, society as a whole – the situation is far from equal or ideal, and until that’s the case anything that supports the progression of it is fine by me.

Regardless of what the various and myriad arguments for or against supporting ‘women in horror’, in whatever guise, as far as my opinion is concerned, Women in Horror Recognition Month barely scratches the surface of the issue, and the broader issue of the under-representation of women in the genre is merely a drop in the broader issue of the under-representation of women in mass-media full stop. If the spirit of Women in Horror Recognition Month does anything right, it’s that it celebrates talent and energy and passion. While the appreciation of any art is entirely subjective, celebrating those who create art and try to make things happen is, to me, a helluva a lot more important than superficial statistical tools like the Bechdel Test. Of course, ‘women in horror’ doesn’t solve every single problem of representation in the genre, nor does it seek to do so. Horror, again like much popular media, is an overwhelmingly white and straight genre, and no amount of hard work for the greater visibility of women in horror is necessarily going to change that. It does, however, fight its own battle, and theoretically and hopefully opens doors for a greater variety of representation in horror. Classic horror itself has always lent itself to telling stories that allowed minorities to be afforded some degree of sympathy, though often through the cyphers of sympathetic monsters who are ultimately destroyed – there’s a reason we often remember and love the monsters and not the heroes. But it’s really time we moved beyond metaphor.

To end on a personal note, I daresay that without the Women in Horror movement, my involvement with the genre would not be what it is today (judge for yourself if that’s a good thing or not!). My passion for the genre was well and truly cemented during the first Women in Horror Recognition Month and without that I’m not sure I would have persisted past ‘casual viewer’ as much as I like to think I have. Regardless of any real-world difference it may or may not make, I, for one, look forward to celebrating Women in Horror Recognition Month in its fifth year. More important, though, is continually taking that spirit of celebration and support to heart all year round.