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By Ben Bussey

September 30th 1988, and US cinemas found themselves hosting two of the biggest blockbusters they’d ever seen… that’s right, I’m talking about Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. And if that opener puts you off then I’d stop reading right now, because in this little retrospective I’ll be doing my utmost to lay on enough innuendo to do the great lady proud.

I mean, I couldn’t even begin to recall the sheer number of double entendres in this movie. Elvira takes a blow to the crown and the big muscly dude asks her how her head is, to which she replies, “I haven’t had any complaints yet.” Big muscly dude says he doesn’t want to bore Elvira with local politics; she murmurs, “go ahead, bore me.” Bunch of teenage boys show up at Elvira’s house to help with redecorating; she’s on all fours looking over her shoulder at them, and tells them to “grab a tool and start banging!”

It seems entirely fitting that a fair percentage of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is devoted to teenage boys gawping over the leading lady. After all, seeing her was formative experience for a great many of us who were on the cusp of coming… ahem, I mean coming of age in the late 80s. As a young kid in Britain at the time, I didn’t see this movie until many years later, nor had I ever seen Elvira’s TV shows; as far as I know they were never broadcast in the UK (I could be wrong). Still, everyone knew who Elvira was. In a decade when the images of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger were embedded in the popular consciousness as the embodiment of the horror genre, Elvira was, I suppose, the nearest we had to a female equivalent of that. But, like every Halloween costume marketed toward women in the intervening 25 years (if not before), she couldn’t be sold on spookiness alone. She had herself a couple of pretty sizeable selling points to capitalise on, after all…

Yeah, I told you I wasn’t going to stop. Just get used to it. Trust me, if this is too much, there’s no way you could handle the low humour in this movie.

And yet… Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is a product of a long-lost era, a time so far away that it almost seems like a myth. A time before Friedberg and Seltzer, and the Wayans Brothers. A time when parody movies were… get this… actually good. They had the absurdity, the cartoonish non-realism and the gutter-level humour, but they also remembered little things like telling a story that was fully rounded (not unlike… ah, you get the point. Heheh, I said “get the point”… oh god, it never ends. As your mama said to me once! Must… stop…)

Now, this movie certainly isn’t on a par with Airplane!, The Naked Gun and the like, but it takes a pretty good stab at it. Much as I did at your ma- okay I’ll stop now.

So, that whole story thing we were talking about: the hostess with the mostest is all geared up for starting her own show in Vegas, but lacks the financing to get it up (heheh!) and running. Cue convenient plot device: the death of a great aunt that Elvira never knew she had (hell, she didn’t even know she had a good one), and an inheritance with her name all over it. So off she goes to some little town in Massachusetts, only to find herself the heir to a seemingly worthless old house whose only notable extras are a poodle and an old recipe book. And to make matters worse, this is a highly buttoned-down, stiff upper lip, conservative community, whose adult population don’t look too favourably upon their outspoken, outlandish-looking new arrival.

While it’s obviously a bit of a stretch to call Elvira, Mistress of the Dark a horror movie, it does very much fit in with the classics insofar as it’s your classic outsider story, in which a judgemental society reacts with suspicion, spite and ultimately aggression to an individual who doesn’t follow their rules. Sure, the movie is obviously played for laughs from start to finish, even in its amusingly OTT supernatural climax (heheh, I said climax… yeah, I knew I couldn’t hold back for too long, as I told your ma-MUST STOP), but there is a serious message of sorts underlying it all about facing the slings and arrows of adversity, remaining true to oneself – and above all, doing it with a smile on your face, with a “fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke” attitude.

Indeed, it’s rather disheartening to note just how much of this still applies a quarter of a century on, given most of the adversity Elvira faces is good ol’ fashioned sexism, constantly fending off the contempt of other women with one hand, and unwanted sexual attention from men with the other. Sadly, a great many (including but not limited to those of my gender) still don’t understand that simply because a woman may proudly display her goodies, it’s not an open invitation to go in hands-first. Of course, this is a movie that is positively bulging (heh- no, too easy) with voyeuristic moments, though no actual nudity – and it’s interesting to note that, while all the grabby guys get the full brunt of Elvira’s wrath, the teenage boys who peep through her window remain her friends afterwards. Not sure that’s entirely the best message, but hey – the overall point of “look, don’t touch” does come across. Heheh, I just said “come across,” in relation to Elvira’s tits…

(Oh, and one of those teenage boys is the D&D kid from Nightmare on Elm Street 3. As distinctive as his dialogue here is, with his near constant references to Elvira’s “gazoongas,” I still struggle not to shout “I am the Wizard Master!” every time he appears.)

Okay, so it’s hardly one of the greatest comedies ever made, but it’s not trying to be. It’s a simple, schlocky movie intended to keep you smiling for 90 minutes, and in that it’s entirely successful. And like so many unfairly maligned movies of the 1980s like Howard the Duck, it understands there’s nothing more badass than a ridiculous fantasy finale in which the bad guy turns into a monster and shoots magic light beams out of his hands. That really doesn’t happen enough these days.

One of the nicest things about it is, voyeuristic camerawork and swathes of sexual connotation notwithstanding, it’s a curiously innocent, almost family-friendly film (PG-13 in the US, 15 in the UK – the BBFC are a bit stricter about sexual references). This in some ways reflects how Elvira sought to embody a somewhat gentler time than the tits and gore-loving 80s into which she was born. I gather that even in her heyday, Elvira refused to host anything too grisly, preferring the camp and corny creature features of the 50s and 60s – and indeed, the movie opens with her hosting Corman’s notoriously crap-tastic It Conquered the World (it’s little surprise that E:MOTD is itself a production of Corman’s New World Pictures), and later sees her delight the local kids with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. It brings to mind Roddy McDowall’s Peter Vincent in the original (and best, obviously) Fright Night, complaining how the youth of the day had renounced the classic monsters in favour of maniacs in ski masks hacking up young virgins. Of course, almost three decades on those of us who were young whippersnappers in the 80s are in our own way every bit as sentimental about the horror of the era as the thirtysomethings of the day were about black and white creature features, so of course there’s no problem with having an affection for both brands; but movies like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark do remind us of the joys of a type of movie that perhaps doesn’t exist in the same way anymore.

So here’s to twenty five years of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark: a heartfelt love letter to the joys of trash cinema, personal freedom, and big boobies. Many happy returns, Elvira: thanks for the mammar – ahem, I mean memories. And, you know, thanks for the other things too.

By Tristan Bishop

Are you old enough (let’s say, 35 or above) to remember the days before DVD and the internet? Back in the pre-digital era, being a horror junkie could be tough work – we didn’t have scores of companies releasing pristine prints of obscurities on VHS tape (Redemption being the exception to the rule), and researching rarities took more effort than typing titles into Google; most of our knowledge came from fanzines, video trading lists and good old word-of-mouth. Back then, we would obsess over whether the Dutch subtitled print of Nightmares In a Damaged Brain was fully uncut, and we all knew one guy who claimed to have the full version of Cannibal Holocaust which included the piranha bait scene (but had a rule of never lending out his tapes).*

It was during this era I became aware of Last House On Dead End Street, a mysterious film credited to suspected pseudonyms, which I could never locate a print of, but which was whispered about as if it was something truly dangerous, in the same breath as the similarly-titled Last House On The Left (which in itself was plenty shocking enough back in the days when the only way to view it was on a bootleg cassette). The film was apparently made in 1972, but shelved for 5 years before a small cinema release. Possibly my favourite mention of the film was in the sadly-missed Psychotronic Magazine, where Michael J Weldon signed off his review with the line “have you ever heard anyone actually admit that they saw it?”

Then the internet and DVD boom happened, and the floodgates opened for so many long unavailable (and even unheard of) genre films, and, for me, LHODES (as it shall henceforth be known) got buried under hundreds of Italian, Spanish and Asian horror flicks. Then, in 2000, something interesting happened. A director of porn films named Roger Watkins popped up on an internet message board claiming to be the director of LHODES (the film is credited to Victor Janos). This lead to Barrel Entertainment putting out a DVD a couple of years later, which finally got this film seen by some of those who had previously only heard rumours about it. However, I shamefully never got around to actually seeing it….

…Until this week, as it happens, when I found myself awake in the early hours of the morning with an urge to watch something scuzzy and low budget. Perfect, I thought, expecting a rough-edged but somewhat boring 70’s shocker to send me off to sleep again. 78 minutes or so later I was awake and transfixed by this strange, dark movie.

Here is the plot the film – a man called Terry Hawkins (played by director Roger Watkins), gets let out of jail, and plans to take his revenge on society. It appears Hawkins previously dabbled in porn, so, trying to go a little harder, hooking up with two girls and a couple of guys, he starts making snuff films, eventually killing his old porn industry cohorts. The end.

It doesn’t sound like much plot to fill nearly 80 minutes of film, and, truth be told, it really isn’t – so whether Watkins’ claims that the original cut was nearly 3 hours (!) are true or not, the film would have been a real slog to get through at that length! As it is, this film is not well made: the editing is awful and hard-to-follow, the script is barely there, and the dubbing is some of the worst I have ever seen, with the characters words very rarely following their mouth movements. The film feels like a student project for most of the length, with pretentious dialogue balanced against technical incompetence, but…well….it has something.

A little background certainly helps in appreciating this film. Like the main character of Hawkins, Roger Watkins was involved in porn, and used drugs heavily (in fact he claimed most of the budget of this film was actually spent on amphetamines). After LHOTDES (Originally under the title The Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell, and then The Funhouse) was picked up, cut, re-edited, and finally sat on a shelf for 5 years before release, Watkins never made another ‘proper’ film, so it’s entirely appropriate to view LHOTDES as one man’s drug-crazed catharsis, a real middle-finger-up to those who might have mistreated him. With these parallels in mind, Watkins’ crazed, maniacal performance starts to have real power, and the increasingly more outrageous scenes in the film start to become more disturbing.

In fact, the earlier killings in the film are bloodless and amateurish, which makes a later sequence where a woman is repeatedly slashed in the face, before her limbs are removed and she is eventually disembowelled a real shocker. This goes far, far beyond anything glimpsed in Last House On The Left or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and reminded me of an HG Lewis gorefest without the colourful slapstick approach, and finally I understood why this film had the reputation it did – the amateurish approach only serves to underline the extremity of this sequence, and this is when viewing it on a laptop HD screen. Can you imagine seeing this on a blurry, choppy nth-generation VHS? It would have felt truly dangerous and transgressive, I would imagine.

Of course, there have been more extreme films since, and infinitely better made ones, but LHOTDES feels like a one-off, made around the same time as Last House On The Left (and later marketed as a rip-off, even using the ‘Keep Repeating’ tagline), it’s just as grim, but feels more like a dark spell cast onto celluloid than an actual professionally-made film. Maybe it wasn’t just a movie after all?

*IT DOES NOT EXIST. No, not even on the Venezuelan VHS. Now sit down and be quiet.

Click here for Plumbing the Depths #1: Raw Force.

By Tristan Bishop

Welcome to the first of a new series in which yours truly will be sifting through the dregs of cinematic endeavour in the vague hope of finding gold (or at the very least something mildly amusing). I’ll be covering mostly horror, but also action, exploitation, sci-fi and some of the stranger genre hybrids I come across.

Speaking of hybrids, I’m starting off with Raw Force, an American/Filipino co-production from 1982. Your interest may be piqued by the alternative title, Kung Fu Cannibals, an alternate title it shares with Tsui Hark’s nearly as mental 1980 We Are Going To Eat You. In fact, whilst it may not have been directly inspired by Hark’s aforementioned film, it does appear to be a spin on the horror kung fu comedies that were coming out of Hong Kong in its wake, notably Sammo Hung’s excellent Encounters Of The Spooky kind, although, as you may expect, it is somewhat lacking in the technical finesse and tightly choreographed action of those golden age HK films.

I’m not entirely certain where the film is set – ‘The Orient’ seems to be the closest I can get. However we are introduced to a small army of characters, members of, believe it or not, The Burbank Karate Club – a bunch of moustachioed idiots on a cruise around, well, somewhere, along with some foxy ladies (at least one of whom, going by the name of Cookie, is a secret member of the LAPD SWAT team). They are joined by a kung-fu master cook who dreams of opening a Chinese restaurant, and the grizzled ship captain, played by Cameron Mitchell (bad movie buffs know they are in for a treat when old Cam’s name appears in the credits for any film made after 1964). The film then spends a living age with these characters getting drunk at nightclubs, fighting amongst themselves, and bedding each other (there is a LOT of nudity in this), until they plot course for Warrior Island, a place that the guidebook describes as the home of disgraced fighters. Unfortunately Warrior Island is a very odd place, populated by crazed monks who exchange vast quantities of jade for trafficked girls who they use to feed the zombie martial artists who roam the beaches. In addition to this, the gangsters who control the jade/girl trade, who appear to have Hitler as their leader, aren’t too keen on having a shipload of visitors to Warrior Island, and so the scene is set for a stand-off between the holiday-makers, the gangsters, the monks and the zombie warriors.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Well…It is. Sort of. Nothing about Raw Force could actually be called ‘good’, but it is at least consistently entertaining. The acting is awful, the script frequently ludicrous, the action occasionally impressive but nowhere near the level of the Hong Kong flicks it is trying to ape, there’s hardly any gore at all, and the zombie make-up mostly consists of white paint. However Raw Force has that irresistible forward thrust that the best bad films have – you genuinely have no idea what level of weirdness to expect next, and it keeps you glued to the screen. I constantly found myself asking whether director Edward Murphy (no, not THAT one) intended the film to be quite as ludicrous as it is (at one point, when the villains board the ship, an announcement over the tannoy exclaims “please remain in your cabins, the ship has been boarded by maniacs”) – there’s an obvious intended comedic element, but the execution is so bizarre it’s impossible to tell how much of this was down to intention and how much to incompetence.

Some things to note – Director Murphy (who sadly only directed one more film) played 12 different characters (!) over the course of ten years on the TV show Law & Order, and yes, that is Filipino trash movie veteran Vic Diaz, given sod all to do as a hilarious grinning, clapping monk, straight out of a Monty Python sketch.

Raw Force is currently missing in action on DVD – Code Red were planning to release it a couple of years back (they even had commentaries recorded) but the rumour is that the producer was in jail and they could not secure a negative! There are numerous grey market DVDR releases available in the States however (mastered from VHS I believe), and at the time of writing, some kindly soul has uploaded it onto YouTube, complete with dodgy video tracking for that complete 1982 experience. Whichever way you can get to see it, Raw Force should be required viewing for all fans of z-grade cinema.

By Ben Bussey

How many billions of conversations in playgrounds/pubs/online forums and so forth have been spawned by the timeless question, “if x and y got in a fight, who would win?” How many scenarios have been played out in the imaginations of fans all over the world, picturing their favourite characters co-existing in the same story world, whether beating the living crap out of one another, doing battle side by side, or getting down to business…? Well, okay, slash fiction may not have quite made the transition to the big screen just yet, but the utterly ridiculous box office takings of The Avengers would seem to indicate that the public taste for spectacular crossover movies is at an all-time high, hence we can look forward to more Avengers, Batman vs. Superman, and almost certainly more besides in the near future.

Is it fair to say it all began a decade ago, when two of the biggest names in 80s horror crossed blades in the same movie for the first, and to date last time…?

I have to tell you, I’m really feeling the years with this one. Writing some of these retrospectives, it’s not hard to accept how long it’s been since the film in question was released. But Freddy vs. Jason… it really does seem like only yesterday. How clearly I recall that weekend in August 2003; visiting a dear old friend (my future best man) in Sheffield, and dragging him (somewhat unwillingly, I suspect) to every nearby cinema in order to see it, only to find it was sold out everywhere; thereafter, getting back to my then-home of Liverpool that Sunday evening, and proceeding to drag my (even less willing) bride-to-be to a late show at what was then the UGC on Edge Lane.

The screen was packed, the crowd was rowdy, and there was barely a moment’s quiet during the movie; under normal circumstances this would almost certainly have pissed me off royally, but in this instance it all felt perfectly in tune with proceedings. From the beginning, it was clear this was not a horror movie inviting the audience to sit back, stroke their chins and get all contemplative. This was a scream, shout, cheer, throw your popcorn in the air kind of movie, and that was very much how the crowd at the UGC reacted that night; everyone seemed to be on the same page, enjoying it in just the same way. I look back on it as being truly one of the best cinema experiences of my life.

This being the case, it wasn’t until I saw the movie again a few days later, in a mid-afternoon show with a much smaller audience, that I came to fully realise just what a deeply flawed movie Freddy vs. Jason really is. And yet these are all flaws I’m still able to overlook a decade on, such is my affection for this movie.

Spoilers ahead, naturally…

A Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street crossover movie is one of those ideas that seems to have been floating around forever, one which any number of people want to take credit for. There’s no real mystery as to why it took so long to materialise: Paramount Pictures owned Jason Voorhees, New Line Cinema owned Freddy Krueger, and neither kid was willing to let the other borrow their best toy. The ball didn’t really get rolling until New Line acquired the rights to Jason, and made Jason Goes To Hell: the Final Friday in 1993. Yeah, never quite understood why the first thing New Line did after acquiring the character was ostensibly kill him off. Of course, that movie did end with a fan-pleasing shot of Jason’s vacant hockey mask being dragged underground by Freddy’s gauntlet, leaving audiences in no doubt as to what was to come – even if it didn’t come until a full decade later. (There was also Jason X in 2001, but given the future setting, it’s in no way referenced in FvJ; nor, unsurprisingly, is the meta-tastic Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.)

Once the legal red tape was out of the way, there was the not insignificant issue of coming up with a narrative that would bring the characters together in a way that didn’t seem too utterly ridiculous. There were a shitload of different treatments and scripts floating around, some of which can be found if you’re inclined to do so, but I think the premise they settled on was probably as good a hook as they could have found: our old frenemy Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund, playing his signature role for what promises to be the last time) is trapped in movie villain limbo, having been long since forgotten by the children of his old slashing ground, Springwood. In a somewhat Jungian twist, it turns out the source of Freddy’s power is his legend; as a scary story the local kids would tell one another around campfires or at sleepovers, Freddy reigned supreme in the collective unconscious. Their fear gave him his strength, and that kept him alive. Nifty, eh? Wait until they get to all that primal symbolism jazz about Freddy dying by fire and Jason by water. But don’t worry, if Jung’s not your bag there’s plenty of considerably less intellectual stuff around the corner.

In another smart move which acknowledges the sizeable gap between movies, it transpires that the elders of Springwood have long since gotten wise to the nature of Krueger’s power; they’ve supressed his legend through strong-armed censorship, plus the strategic ferreting out of undesirables who are then reprogrammed via illegal pharmaceutical means. (Yep, authority figures infringing on civil liberties, for the people’s own good… and this was only 2003.) The illegal drug in question is Hypnocil; yes, Freddy fans, that’s the dream suppressant prescribed to the kids in Part 3. The ‘crazy’ kids of FvJ are even in the same institution – Westin Hills. (References to widely acknowledged best sequel = instant fan credibility.) So, trapped on the other side, how can Freddy get back in the game? By spreading the fear once again – and who better to do that than the mindless, machete-swinging meathead of the apparently-nearby rural community Crystal Lake. Working his dream mojo on the slumbering indestructible hulk, Freddy sends Jason off to Springwood to wreak havoc.

Of course, there may have been trouble in paradise for some fans already, for – as that synopsis alone indicates – there would seem to be a definite narrative bias in favour of Freddy. Is this because it’s a New Line production, and Freddy was their baby, whilst Jason was merely their disadvantaged foster child? Perhaps. Or it might just be because, comparatively speaking, there isn’t really all that much you can do with Jason. As iconic as the two characters are, and as much as they do compliment one another, they’re pretty far removed in their overall approach, what with Jason being a silent, plodding, mindless killer, and Freddy being the scheming, wisecracking supervillain. Having Freddy manipulate Jason via his dreams was an entirely sensible move; more curious is how this approach tends to promote Jason as a figure of sympathy. Sure, it makes sense that we might feel sorry for him, given the hand he was dealt; disfigurement, social rejection, drowning, domineering mother who wound up getting decapitated. The fact that he died a child whilst Freddy is a child killer provides yet another parallel between the characters; in fact, if I’ve read correctly an earlier script had Freddy actually being one of the camp counsellors who let him drown, and may also have molested him. Still, Jason’s victim card can’t be played too heavily, given this movie sees him rack up one of his highest body counts: at least twenty-two, including Freddy at the climax (though, of course, neither of them can really be said to have died), and Odessa Munroe’s skinny dipper, who turns out to be a part of Jason’s own dream.

Ah yes, the opening scene skinny dip… okay, technically it’s not the first scene in the movie, given the Freddy-centric prologue, but for the moment that kick-starts the narrative to give us nudity almost automatically; if ever there was a clear declaration of intent made in a horror movie, it’s that. Tawdry and obvious? Absolutely, and that’s exactly the point. One thing we have to bear in mind is, when Freddy vs. Jason arrived in 2003, horror was in a rather strange place. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say it was facing a potentially greater threat than the Hays Code, the Video Recordings Act and the PMRC put together. Yes, horror was in grave danger of becoming… whisper it… respectable. The huge success of The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense, along with awards nods aplenty for the latter, resulted in both a mainstream popularity and a highbrow acceptance that the genre arguably hadn’t known for some time, with the ‘less is more’ sensibility catching on like wildfire; the rise of J-horror also played no small part in that.

The real joy of Freddy vs Jason, then, is how it cast all that aside and went back to the time-honoured 80s approach of showing everything, and often. I daresay it was almost certainly the goriest mainstream studio movie ever released at the time (though Final Destination 2 made a good stab at it earlier that year, and Kill Bill Vol. 1 probably outdid it two months later). Bodies folded in half, heads splattered, chest cavities gushing like hosepipes, chunks of flesh flying left and right – is it any wonder audiences whooped and cheered? Furthermore, is it any wonder how receptive the studios were toward graphic gore in the years that followed (coughtorturepornahem)?

The movie’s really alive when the arterial spray hits the screen. And in the two scenes when Freddy and Jason finally do battle – the last twenty minutes in particular… my face still aches just remembering how hard I smiled on first viewing. The Hong Kong style that director Ronny Yu brings fits the action like a knife-laden glove; the way it all builds from a high energy wrestling-esque spectacle, into almost a live-action Tom and Jerry as they swing on chains and pelt one another with lethal implements from on high. Then how it finally devolves into a relentlessly bloody blade-augmented no holds barred brawl, the two slasher icons gradually taking each other apart piece by piece, literally… all that’s missing is Freddy saying “you didn’t get me down, Jason.” Truly, it’s the stuff of every 80s horror child’s dreams.

But that’s when the movie is on form. Now for the rest of it, starting with… the teen ensemble. Oh, sweet lord, the teen ensemble.

Now, allow me to say in opening on this – I do not by any means hate any of these actors. Some of them, indeed, I actively admire: Katharine Isabelle, obviously (more on whom later); Monica Keena I quite enjoyed in the Night of the Demons remake (yes, I do mean for her acting, not just her torso); I dug Christopher Marquette in Fanboys; and Brendan Fletcher actually gives a really pretty good performance here, being blessed with one of the better roles as the sardonic Westin Hills inmate Mark. However, put them all together, give them that script, and throw in a few very, very weak links, and you wind up with – no word of exaggeration – the single most annoying bunch of teens in the history of both the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises. Yes, I’m well aware that’s saying a hell of a lot. This gang really is that bad. And the lion’s share of the blame has to fall on writers Damien Shannon and Mark Swift (with a side order of shame for uncredited script doctor David Goyer). The script emphasises this unengaging, largely unsympathetic pack of fucktards, fleshing out tedious subplot after tedious subplot, filling their mouths with horrendously overwritten dialogue – and all at the expense of the title characters, who wind up supporting players in their own damn film.

Like I say, I don’t hold all the actors entirely at fault; the ones I mentioned beforehand are doing what they can to make it work. But seriously, what were they thinking with Kyle Labine (incidentally, brother of Tyler Labine from Tucker and Dale versus Evil)? If they wanted Jason Mewes, why not just get Jason Mewes? And Jason Ritter… just no. He’s just too feeble, he doesn’t remotely convince as would-be romantic hero Will. But those guys are Sir Laurence Fucking Olivier by comparison with the worst, most annoying performer in the ensemble, giving almost certainly the single least likeable performance in the history of the Freddy and Jason movies… Kelly Fucking Rowland. Jesus Tittyfucking Christ, it’s like nails on a chalkboard every time she opens her mouth. Maybe they thought making her alternately utter “fuck” and “y’all” every other word would make her seem – I dunno – real. All it succeeds in doing is making her really, really, unbelievably annoying and impossible to care about. And yes, that is a problem. Sure, some characters in slashers are deliberately annoying so we’ll get some joy out of seeing them killed, but that isn’t how they play it here. We’re supposed to care who makes it out of there alive in the final reel, when in fact all we want to do is see them get the fuck out of the way so we can concentrate on messrs. Voorhees and Krueger battering the bejesus out of one another. Subsequently, when Rowland meets her inevitable demise, it just feels like an afterthought.

All this being the case, Katharine Isabelle kind of lucked out by getting killed off early…

And this is where it gets a bit ugly, as while I may look back on Freddy vs. Jason with much fondness, it’s hard to imagine Katharine Isabelle does, and it’s hard not to remark that the film probably didn’t do her career any big favours. When I got to meet Ms Isabelle in Sheffield on the American Mary UK tour early this year, I opted not to broach the subject of Freddy vs. Jason as much for expediency as anything else, but one remark she made in the post-screening Q&A did stand out to me. Asked whether she feared typecasting in bad girl roles, she replied (and I’m going from memory here, so I apologise if I’m paraphrasing) “good girls are boring twats.” If we’re in an unforgiving mood, that would seem a fairly apt description of Lori, Freddy vs. Jason’s final girl played by Monica Keena – and, up until quite late in the day, the role Katharine Isabelle was supposed to be playing.

In the wake of Ginger Snaps, Isabelle was shit-hot, hence New Line wanted her heading up their horror flagship. However, somewhere down the line it was decided she would be a better fit for the bad girl Gibb, and so that was the part she wound up playing, without any real choice in the matter. This also meant she was suddenly expected to do a nude scene; something she remains unwilling to do to this day, and why the hell not. Naturally she refused, hence a body double appears from a weird bird’s-eye view angle in the obligatory gratuitous (not a contradiction in terms here) shower scene. But her refusal to bend to the will of her superiors surely didn’t go unnoticed, not to mention how openly she spoke about her treatment and her overall disappointment with the film not long thereafter. Keeping in mind it was so soon after Ginger Snaps, in which Isabelle did such fantastic work with such a meaty role, it’s hard not to feel a bit pained watching her go through the motions in a fairly thankless slasher victim part. Even so, her comedic gifts do shine through here and there; take her wonderfully OTT reaction to the first bed-folding murder.

Nor was that the only casting controversy, given long-running Jason actor Kane Hodder was dumped for Ken Kirzinger, and the original Mrs. Voorhees Betsy Palmer declined to return after New Line refused to pay her above basic SAG minimum; not the best deal for someone who played a major role in launching the Friday the 13th franchise. If I’m not mistaken, Jason Ritter was also a late substitution for Brad Renfro, owing surely to the drug problems which would sadly end the young actor’s life not long thereafter.

Put all these problems to one side, though, and Freddy vs. Jason remains a very enjoyable film; I’d rank it in my personal top five of both the Friday and Nightmare franchises. I’d also argue that it’s a pivotal movie in modern horror – for better or worse. First off, along with Alien vs. Predator the next year, it brought back crossover movies – and you just know someone at Marvel was sitting up and taking notice. On top of which, it brought back tits and gore in a big way, demonstrating that explicit was the way to go, and thereby paving the way for the torture movies. Also, it closed the book on the two behemoth 80s horror franchises (both of which were rebooted in the years ahead). Yet in doing so – and making big money in the process, more than recouping its $30 million budget almost overnight – it also demonstrated, hand in hand with that fucking Platinum Dunes Texas Chainsaw remake, how easily new takes on the horror movies of yesteryear could be sold to a modern audience. Freddy vs. Jason might have been, in its own way, bold, risky, and even experimental for a mainstream movie, but it played a part in ushering in the nauseatingly risk-averse, lowest common denominator-friendly horror remake boom, from which we’re still struggling to escape the fallout a decade on. And that’s just from one movie; imagine what might have happened had Sam Raimi let them make Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash next, and/or if Dimension had managed to get their hastily-planned Pinhead vs. Michael Myers movie off the ground…

But once again, while there’s plenty we can criticise Freddy vs. Jason for, there can’t be many horror fans who lived through the 1980s that don’t still get just a little bit of a buzz from the mere idea of the two greatest killers of the era having a fight. It may be childish, it may be dumb, and maybe we should know better than to enjoy it; but we can say that about of a hell of a lot of horror, can’t we? And would we really want it any other way…?

By Tristan Bishop

Picture the scene – a cinema in a seaside town. The year is 1998, and you are in the audience for a midnight showing of a film which has been virtually unavailable for the best part of 20 years. You’ve heard about this film, of course – the entire audience has. Most of what you have heard is hearsay, rumour, but that doesn’t matter – this is the stuff of legend. You’ve perhaps heard that the film was banned in the UK, forbidden by the Catholic Church. Perhaps you’ve heard reports of the hysteria that accompanied the original screenings – fainting, vomiting, people being rushed to hospital. Of course you want to see this – the film’s reputation as forbidden fruit precedes it. This is a midnight showing, and it’s sold-out, the audience visibly and audibly excited, ready to be scared within an inch of their lives.

But something unexpected happens. The audience quickly realise they are watching a film that is 25 years old. A film from the 70s – this audience is young, mostly in their early twenties, this isn’t for them – they laugh at the fashions, the hairstyles, the dialogue, and the effects. They came expecting shrieking terror, instead they got history.

It’s understandable, of course. Your average cinema-goer isn’t all that interested in film history, or placing a work in context, and there’s no reason that they should – they go for entertainment. But in the case of The Exorcist (as with most films from 20 or more years ago) a bit of background can really help.

We can really start in 1967, the Summer of Love. Hippie counter-culture was making waves across the globe, a whole generation was turning on, tuning in and dropping out, celebrating peace and love and togetherness. Of course, it didn’t last long – by the early days of 1970 the dream was over, killed off by Altamont, Vietnam and hard drugs, but the seeds of destruction had always been there – at the height of the hippie bloom an increased interest in occult and hermetic knowledge had resulted in a public which was more terrified than ever by the perceived threat of evil. The devil was waiting outside the door, and perhaps people were interested in inviting him in.

It was then that, alongside the incredibly prolific Dennis Wheatley, that a book by Ira Levine, entitled Rosemary’s Baby, became a massive success (selling over 4 million copies that year alone). As usual with a successful work of fiction, it was brought to the screen – the ever-canny William Castle purchasing the rights even before publication, and with his courting of Roman Polanski (at that time the darling of the arthouse crowd) as director, the film had a massive impact, a thrilling injection of real darkness at a time when horror films, still perceived as kiddie material, were still trying to claw themselves out of the 1950s. It’s no accident that Night Of The Living Dead was also released in 1968, a year zero for the ‘modern’ horror film.

Flash forward to 1971 now, and writer William Peter Blatty, already with 12 years of published writing under his belt, penned The Exorcist – based on a ‘real life’ case from 1949. Blatty changed the sex of the possessed child as the real case was a young boy, and amongst the expected artistic embellishments he added a prologue with Father Merrin, one of the main characters, uncovering a statue of the demon Pazuzu himself in Iraq. Interestingly enough, Merrin was based on General Lankaster Harding (Merrin’s first name is Lankaster), an archaeologist involved in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, who was an acquaintance of Blatty’s.

The book was a huge hit, and of course was immediately optioned for a major film, with Blatty adapting it from his own novel. Unfortunately the production was not an easy one – and the producers approached Arthur Penn, Peter Bogdanovich, Mike Nichols, Mark Rydell, John Boorman, and even Stanley Kubrick to direct – all of whom turned it down because of the material or the challenge of working on a film hinging on the performance of a child. Boorman even went so far as to accuse the script of ‘cruelty to children’, although one wonders if he may have regretted this decision, as he went on to direct Exorcist II: The Heretic.

Eventually the job went to William Friedkin. Blatty had been a big fan of The French Connection (1971), citing the energy of that film as the reason he pushed for Friedkin to be onboard. Casting was equally difficult, with both Jack Nicholson and Stacy Keach considered for the role of Father Karras before the role eventually went to Jason Miller, after Friedkin spotted him in a play. The director also vetoed Marlon Brando for the role of Merrin, fearing his star power too great, and instead cast Max Von Sydow, best known then for his roles in Bergman dramas. The casting of the young girl Regan was equally fraught, but eventually went to the relatively unknown Linda Blair. With the cast and crew finally assembled, work began in earnest. The production was originally scheduled to last for 85 days, but, due mostly to Friedkin’s perfectionism and ‘unusual’ methods, ended up as 224.

The stories around the making of the film are legendary, from on-set fires causing the main sets to be rebuilt, to Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn both being injured after being pulled too hard in harnesses. Burstyn’s real screams of pain are left in the film (the scene where she is slapped by Regan), but Friedkin went even further to maximise his cast’s discomfort – he slapped Reverend Williiam O’Malley across the face before an emotional scene, let off a gun on set to unnerve Jason Miller, and even built the bedroom set inside a giant freezer so that the actor’s breath could be seen onscreen (an effect much easier to produce in these days of CGI!). The uneasy atmosphere caused by these occurrences lead many of the crew to believe the film itself was cursed, and indeed Jack MacGowran, who played Burke Dennings, died before the film was completed. Legend has it that the set was blessed by priests several times during production.

These were not the only techniques that Friedkin used. He hired veteran radio actor Mercedes McCambridge (previously seen in Jess Franco’s women-in-prison ‘classic’ 99 Women) to voice Pazuzu, his original technique of manipulating Linda Blair’s voice deemed not dramatic enough; this was a masterstroke, as the voice sounds genderless but powerful and threatening. He also pioneered the use of mixing layers of sound (apparently including slaughterhouse footage) to create unease, and, most controversially, the use of ‘subliminal’ images, such as the now-famous ‘face of Pazuzu’ scattered throughout the film.

Fittingly for a film so steeped in Christian lore, the film was released on Boxing Day 1973, and drew some extremely mixed criticism from the mainstream press. Stanley Kauffmann, Gene Siskel and Variety magazine all heaped praise upon it, whilst The New York Times called it ‘practically impossible to sit through’. My favourite piece of negative criticism comes from Jon Landau in Rolling Stone however – “nothing more than a religious porn film – The gaudiest piece of schlock this side of Cecil B DeMille”.

The mixed notices did little to harm the film however, with $66 million dollars in revenue for the original domestic release making it the second biggest grossing box office that year, next to The Sting (which, ironically, has become increasingly forgotten over the years). This was helped of course by reports of people fainting during the film, and ambulances being on standby outside theatres, although how much of this is truth and how much clever publicity has been difficult to gauge over the years.

With that success came, of course, came the imitators. The devil was out in force, and, as always, the Italians were first to jump on the bandwagon, releasing Beyond The Door in 1974, followed by a figurative projectile-vomit of Exorcist clones, such as The Antichrist, Eerie Midnight Horror Show and The House Of Exorcism (actually a hatchet-job on Mario Bava’s surreal and creepy Lisa And The Devil, re-edited and with added ‘Exorcism’ scenes). Blaxploitation take-off Abby also turned up in 1974, and was quickly buried under litigation from Warner Bros, although it’s worth watching for the only ‘disco exorcism’ on film. Even the Turkish got on board with Seytan (also 1974), an oddly Islamic slant on a very Christian idea. The Exorcist even paved the way for the equally successful devil movie the Omen (1976) and attendant sequels.

There were official sequels too, although each appeared only after long gaps of time. First came Exorcist II: The Heretic in 1979, directed by the aforementioned John Boorman, which is an unholy, occasionally hilarious mess of a film, and not recommended unless you want to watch Richard Burton hitting rock bottom. The Exorcist 3 (1990) was much better – Blatty took the directorial reigns on this one and proved himself the right man for the job, using brave cinematic techniques such as uninterrupted long shots to heighten the sense of unease. Unfortunately in 2004 the usually excellent Paul Schrader made a prequel entitled Dominion, which studio execs hated. Though completed, his project was shelved, and Renny Harlin (of all people!) was brought in to make a more commercial prospect entitled Exorcist: the Beginning, which, predictably, was universally panned. The studio eventually gave in to public pressure and released Schrader’s version of the film. Unfortunately this also went down like a lead balloon, despite having the slight artistic edge.

Contrary to popular misconception The Exorcist was never banned in the UK. There were protests by the Christian group The Festival Of Light, who also objected to such enduring works as The Devils and Straw Dogs, but it was released – surprisingly uncut – with an X certificate by the BBFC. Stephen Murphy of the BBFC was quoted at the time as saying “It is a powerful horror movie. Some people may dislike it, but that is not a sufficient reason for refusing certification” (a rare example of the pre-2000 BBFC making an informed, balanced decision there!)

Much of the film’s ‘banned’ legend status instead came with the advent of home video and the subsequent ‘video nasties’ debacle. The film was briefly available in the lawless early days of home video, but after moral panic set in Warner Bros decided not to resubmit it for video classification. It’s probably testament to the power and reception of the film on release that the general public assumed a ban had occurred. However, the UK cinema re-release at the end of the 20th century proved that there was money to be made, and then finally we could see the film in the comfort of our own homes.

So, there are few horror films with such convoluted history and production as the Exorcist. In many ways it can be seen as the victim of its own hype, success, and, for some time, unavailability, with scenes like those at the start of this article played out on its re-release across the UK. However, Friedkin’s film stands on its own merits, as a well-made, visceral shocker, and remains the benchmark against which the devil’s works are judged.

By Oliver Longden

Clowns; the number one entertainment career of choice for serial killers, potential serial killers and people who just hate children. Whether you’re afraid of clowns like many normal people or sexually attracted to them as I am, there’s no mistaking the fact that a clown in its natural environment is about as funny as a long weekend with Michael Gove whispering right wing nothings in your ear while he gently spoons you in an uncomfortably small bunk bed. When professional clown John Wayne Gacy turned out to have a nasty habit of raping and murdering children it didn’t come as a surprise so much as a confirmation of everything people always suspected about the greasepaint and confetti brigade. Clowns are and always have been fucking horrifying.

The clowns in Killer Klowns from Outer Space aren’t all that scary when compared to the Joker, the clown from IT, Patch Adams and every single real life clown you’ve ever seen. Unlike real world clowns (and Patch Adams) they are actually quite funny. The Killer Klowns of the title are aliens who have come down to Earth in a space ship shaped like a big top and go on a circus themed rampage across small town America. Along the way there are horrific parodies of all manner of traditional clown acts, from the tiny clown car to the old custard pie to the kisser. A small group of misfits struggles to fight against the clowns whilst waving their arms about and delivering performances I might charitably describe as extremely enthusiastic.

Killer Klowns is a good time movie that only occasionally tries to be a horror film. It has become a cult classic in the 25 years since it was released simply because it feels a lot like a movie about murderous space clowns ought to feel. If you spent five minutes sketching out the sort of things you might expect to find in a film about psychotic clowns from space the chances are you’d come up with at least half the things that are in Killer Klowns from Outer Space. This is a film that’s on the same wavelength as its audience. It’s a movie that wants you to relax, have a few beers, have a few more beers and finish that bottle of Pernod some weirdo abandoned at your last party. You’re here to have fun and fun will be provided. It might make you cringe on occasion but that’s all part of the raucous cacophony of hoopla that is Killer Klowns from Outer Space. It helps that the film starts out on a strong footing with a bouncy title track written by goofy LA punks The Dickies. It’s enormously infectious and really sets the tone of the film nicely.

The directors and writers of Killer Klowns, the Chiodo brothers are more famously known as special effects people being responsible for the creature design of Critters (surely about twenty minutes work with a tribble and some false teeth) as well as working on Team America: World Police with Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Their background shows; the special effects are a masterclass in doing a little with even less, pure joy to a relentless CGI hating luddite like myself. The performances range from hammy to downright ludicrous which fits the material like a glove. There’s a particularly nice turn from perennial film arsehole John Vernon (Dirty Harry, Animal House) playing the town’s ridiculously angry sheriff. It’s a character who would be wildly unbelievable were he not being played by John Vernon, a man who could have played Lassie in a way that made people want to punch her right in her stupid dog face. There aren’t too many other names you’re likely to recognise although there are some faces that might be hauntingly familiar from minor roles in the background of television shows like CSI Miami.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space is not a film that deserves to be remembered because it is particularly influential. It’s not well acted or well directed, and the special effects aren’t even particularly good. The design of the Klowns themselves aren’t all that impressive and the sets towards the end of the film are little more than cardboard shapes on a black sound stage that evoke the weird impressionist non-sets in the third series of the 1960s Batman. The film comes from a long line of light-hearted B-movie shockers like The Ape Man and Bucket of Blood that trade more on chutzpah than technical sophistication. It’s just one of those low budget films that simply works because it isn’t trying too hard. In a world where Michael Bay feels it necessary to bore the shit out an audience for more than two and half hours to tell the story of some robots who really want to punch some other robots, films like Killer Klowns from Outer Space are starting to feel like lost classics. Killer Klowns from Outer Space land on Earth, fuck shit up, the end. What’s not to like?