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25 Years of The Lost Boys: "Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die."

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by Stephanie Scaife

Caution: spoilers ahead…

1987. Regan is President, the Cold War continues, Thatcher is re-elected Prime Minister, the first ever episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation airs on television… and on 31st July Joel Schumacher’s teen vampire flick The Lost Boys was unleashed on US audiences. 25 years later and it has found mass cult appeal, thanks in part to being one of Warners’ best selling VHS tapes ever released and that for my generation it offered something new – vampires as young, beautiful, immortal rock stars, not pasty old loners holed up in castles or creeping around foggy cemeteries.

I’m almost certain that I’ve told this story before, but way back in the late 80’s when my mum bought a VHS player the first two videos she bought were Blade Runner and The Lost Boys, and for the longest while they were the only videos that we had, resulting in them being watched ad nauseam, and for me as an adolescent The Lost Boys had a profound effect. As we’re seeing today, the allure of the teenage vampire can be very popular with young girls; I’m just glad that for my generation this included sex, violence, rock ‘n’ roll and some pretty fucking awesome 80’s hairstyles. Not sparkly, chaste, vegetarian vampires…

I really wish that I could say it was the rather awesome Kiefer Sutherland as David, the leader of the vamp gang, that piqued my interest, but sadly no; I was 8 years old and I was in love with the two Coreys. This was in the days before the internet, and it’s not like I could start an appreciation Tumblr or write slash fiction; instead I had scrap books, and I’d spend hours cutting out pictures from teen heart-throb magazines and hand-writing fan letters whilst listening to the soundtrack on vinyl. Not to mention sitting though such gems as License to Drive and Dream a Little Dream as a consequence of my obsession, in-between repeat viewings of The Lost Boys, which I think I must’ve seen over 50 times in my life and could probably recite the entire script backwards. To me this almost seems rather quaint now in a world where you can gather every piece of information about your idol online and millions can be made from publishing your poorly written fan fiction.

As it happens The Lost Boys wasn’t intended to resemble anything like the finished product. Instead it was originally about 8-9 year old vampires in a more literal rift on the Peter Pan reference of the title. What Schumacher did was envision the film with teenagers with the aim of making it cool and sexy, and certainly not the kids film that the studio had wanted. He took a massive risk making such an of-the-moment-film, full of unknown actors that blended the near impossible to pull off combination of horror and comedy. But against all odds he managed to succeed, not least because of the fantastic cast, a great soundtrack and cinematography by the legendary Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull). The Lost Boys is knowingly kitsch and it almost takes itself too seriously, but I think it pulls it off by being scary enough, sexy enough and cool enough to appeal to a vast audience, and I think that it still stands up today, although that may just be my nostalgia talking. It may also be my poor taste that thinks although it’s very certainly the 80’s it still looks great and any hipster on the streets of Williamsburg would probably kill for Sam’s wardrobe.

Following on from The Hunger (1983) and Fright Night (1985), The Lost Boys continued to up the ante in making vampires contemporary. Vampires have never been the stereotypical movie monster, although they are traditionally male they are often times handsome and alluring, not like Frankenstein’s Monster, The Mummy or The Wolfman. But whereas Dracula or other similar gothic incantations saw themselves holed up in faraway castles, these contemporary vampires were far more sociable, not to mention oozing in sex. In The Lost Boys, David (Kiefer Sutherland) and the rest of his family are portrayed as mysterious, a thing apart from normal life and so hip and cool that everyone around them yearns to be like them; including Michael (Jason Patric) who is immediately taken with the only female member, Star (Jami Gertz).

Michael is part of another, altogether more typical dysfunctional family consisting of his teenage brother Sam (Corey Feldman), his recently divorced mom (Dianne Wiest) and his eccentric taxidermist Grandpa (Barnard Hughes). They have recently relocated to Santa Carla, CA – or “the murder capital of the world” as it’s known in the film – from Phoenix, AZ. Santa Carla is a Boardwalk town full of misfits, transients and punk rockers – a world away from the landlocked Phoenix, enabling for classic fish-out-of-water narrative devices, especially in regards to Sam who is portrayed as a sort of fashion victim more comfortable hanging out at the mall than on the beach, and Michael who tries desperately to impress Star by saying he wants to get his ear pierced. However, each brother goes in a distinctly different direction in their bid to become accepted in their new surroundings.

Sam meets up with the Frog brothers, Edgar (Corey Feldman) and Alan (Jamison Newlander), two kids who run a comic store on the Boardwalk, that are self-proclaimed vampire hunters. Schumacher had asked Feldman and Newlander to study Stallone and Chuck Norris movies and to become that kind of 80’s action commando-type character and to also take themselves very seriously indeed, which effectively adds a great amount of humour to their roles. The Frog brothers give Sam horror comics to read, which they seem to take as gospel and use as self defence manuals, and although initially humouring them Sam quickly gets sucked in, especially as he starts to see vampiric traits from the comics appear in his brother Michael.

Michael on the other hand is quick to ingratiate himself with David and the others, initially due to his attraction to Star, and later as he is seduced by the danger and mystery of this gang of teenagers seemingly unhindered by responsibility and any sort of adult supervision. In one of the most infamous scenes in the film David tricks Michael into believing that he’s eating maggots and worms instead of Chinese take-out so as to easily coax him into drinking blood, hence turning Michael into a half-vampire, only to become a fully fledged vampire upon committing his first kill.

During the 1980’s with the increased press coverage and growing fear surrounding the official recognition of HIV and AIDS, the vampire story started to take on a whole new meaning. Vampires after all are all about sex and blood and the popularity of certain film genres, horror in particular, has a tendency over the years to reflect the socio-economic climate of the time – from the cold war politics and racism of the 1960’s in Night of the Living Dead, to the 1970’s backlash against the Vietnam war in Last House on the Left, to the vampire films of the 1980’s like The Lost Boys and Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark where we see young, sexually active people being afflicted with vampirism transmitted through penetration both sexual and as a means to consume blood. So after being tricked into consuming David’s blood and consummating his relationship with Star, things start to go all sorts of weird for Michael. He sleeps all day, wears sunglasses indoors, he smells bad, so wait… is he a creature of the night or is he just a teenage boy?

Meanwhile, oblivious to all of this, their mom Lucy has found herself a job at a local video store and is dating the manager Max, who just so happens to be the mild mannered middle-aged head vampire! In another of my favourite scenes (that also offers somewhat of a plot hole) Max comes over for dinner and Sam along with the Frog brothers try and catch him out by spiking his food with garlic and seeing if he glows in the dark, however we learn that by inviting a vampire into your home it renders you powerless against them. Although, as we’d seen earlier in the film Michael fails to cast a reflection in his own home but Max on the other hand clearly has a reflection in the mirror Sam plants in front of him. Perhaps being the head vampire gives you extra inexplicable powers, or perhaps by now I should’ve learned to stop questioning horror films.

Once the cat is out of the bag the final third of the film turns to fairly standard genre fare as our protagonists battle against the vampires, and although the events that transpire are more than a little predictable there are a few memorable death scenes that remain unparalleled even today – my little 8 year-old mind was pretty much blown as we see “death by stereo,” toilets exploding with blood and Kiefer Sutherland impaled on a mound of taxidermy deer antlers. Even today you’d struggle to find such imaginative ways of vampire disposal and I think that is one of the many reasons why The Lost Boys still stands up today. Yes it’s cheesy and yes it’s very clearly set in the 80’s but it’s still a funny, scary, sexy movie that will continue to inspire both fascination and nostalgia, depending on your age, for years to come. Something that not many recent vampire films could lay claims to. Let’s just not mention the 2 straight to video sequels.

It takes a certain kind of film to inspire the sort of following that The Lost Boys has, and even now all of its primary cast are associated with this above anything else that they’ve done in their careers. Perhaps that’s not too much of a stretch with Jami Gertz, but when you look at actors like Kiefer Sutherland it definitely says something about the power of the film; that this is the one he continuously gets quoted back to him and is constantly flagged as a favourite amongst his fans. I think ultimately The Lost Boys was a combination of being in the right place at the right time to capture the imaginations of a disenfranchised generation looking for some escapism and its longevity is proof that although it’s hardly Citizen Kane (and in fact it’s not even as good as the lesser known Near Dark which came out later that year), there is something very special about The Lost Boys. In another 25 years time I’m sure I’ll still be watching it at least once a year and quoting lines back with my friends, so just remember: “They’re only noodles, Michael.”

RoboCop – 25 Years of The Future of Law Enforcement

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By Ben Bussey

Beware of spoilers ahead – but come on, if you haven’t seen RoboCop what the hell have you been doing?

We’ve seen a fair few landmark films celebrate major anniversaries so far this year: 25 years of Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and Evil Dead 2, as well as 30 years of New York Ripper, Cat People, Basket Case, Conan the Barbarian and The Thing. But for me personally, the film celebrating its silver jubilee today, having opened in US cinemas on July 17th 1987, is more of a landmark than any of those. It gives me great pride to say that Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi/action/black comedy masterpiece RoboCop was my first real 18.

In case any of our non-British readers need an explanation – cue the obligatory contemptuous glance down the nose at any ignorant heathen who doesn’t know our customs – the 18 certificate is second only to the R18 (which covers hardcore porn, and in any case didn’t exist back in the 80s) as the highest, most restrictive certificate a film can receive from the BBFC, making it basically equivalent to the MPAA’s X and subsequently NC-17, although it also tends to cover the more ‘Hard-R’ movies; and I think we can safely count RoboCop as one of those. Now, when I say it was my first ‘real 18,’ I should explain that I had already seen at least one 18-rated film to my recollection, which was Alex Cox’s Repo Man*; a great film for sure, but one that hardly warrants an 18 given that it received the rating based purely on the amount of swearing (a move not unheard of nowadays, but considerably less common). Of course, a pre-teen boy such as I was then isn’t going to complain about the level of profanity in a film – there’s nothing bigger, cleverer or funnier than rude words, after all, and no weapon more vital on the fledgling battlefield that is the playground – but at that age, we longed to see something more. Not boobies, necessarily; interest in those matters had not quite emerged yet, and girls were still very much the enemy. No, what we really wanted was violence. We knew there was more to it than we’d seen on TV. He-Man and Lion-O swung their swords around, but the bodies of their enemies remained intact. The A-Team fired about a million rounds an episode but nobody ever got shot. Roger Moore might unload his Walther PPK on a roomful of anonymous baddies, but all they ever did was fall to the ground clutching their chests. There had to be something we were missing…

And I found out just what that missing something was the afternoon I sat down in the front room of a school friend whose gloriously lax parents, very much unlike mine, let him watch whatever he wanted (which rapidly made him the most popular boy in school). I still remember the trepidation I felt the moment ED-209 came clunking dinosaur-like into the OCP boardroom. That aggressive visage, the ominous motorised hum, and of course those gargantuan guns; such an incongruous sight in the enclosed, clean, ostensibly civilised corporate setting. I vividly recall my own panic and sense of impending doom as that nitwit exec, having unwittingly ‘volunteered,’ half-heartedly threatens ED-209 with the .45 Desert Eagle; an imposing handgun under most circumstances, but wielding about as much defensive power as a pea-shooter under the circumstances. That 20 second countdown may well have been the longest 20 seconds of my life, knowing full well they were going to end badly. My heart thumped, adrenaline surged – and I struggled not to giggle. And then…

Yep. Granted, the above clip is from the director’s cut, and it wasn’t quite so drawn out and excessive in the theatrical/VHS version I saw that day, but still… it was never like that on The A-Team. Truly this was the stuff a ten year old boy’s dreams were made of.

RoboCop is one of those films that could only be a product of the 80s. In many ways it really isn’t too hard to see why so many people were uptight about what constituted family entertainment back then, when you consider that there were, amongst other things, action figures and cartoons of Rambo, Chuck Norris, and of course RoboCop himself. Obviously the concept of a half-robot crime fighter was always going to appeal to kids, and only in the 80s would such a concept be blatantly marketed toward them, despite the source material being so flagrantly inappropriate for that age group. As such, it’s not really so surprising as some would claim that further down the line in the series the producers opted to tone things down for a family audience… but the less said about that the better. We’re not here to mourn RoboCop’s decline; we’re here to celebrate his glory, in his first and (by a very great margin) best film.

Of course, while it was the guns, gore and F-bombs that had my younger self spellbound, it wasn’t until I was a little older that I came to realise just how much more is going on in RoboCop. The true gift of Paul Verhoeven (insofar as his American work is concerned, at least) is how he can put together a film with mass appeal which may at a glance appear to be the most intellectually redundant schlock imaginable, but on closer inspection proves to be a biting satire on most of that which is held dear by mainstream western society, and above all the US. From an outsider perspective RoboCop could easily seem the ultimate Reaganite dream, boasting as it does a hard- bodied gun-toting alpha male hero with a zero tolerance attitude to lawbreakers. However, it doesn’t take a doctorate in media studies to recognise what an assault on Reagan’s America the film really is.

We’re presented with an alternate reality in which the corporations control everything, and as always the primary corporate interest is profit. These yuppies pull the strings from on high in their futuristic ivory towers, with the best suits on their bones and the best Bolivian export up their noses, whilst at ground level the city is in a state of extreme disrepair, with civil unrest and violent crime everywhere the eye can see. In the midst of this, one decent cop finds himself working the roughest beat in town, and winds up bullet-ridden and dismembered on his deathbed before his first day is over. But as a police officer, he sold himself over to the company as soon as he signed up. OCP own him and can do what they want with him. Indeed, they had specifically reassigned him to a high casualty precinct as he was deemed a ‘prime candidate;’ for him to meet his death was all part of the plan. Next thing you know, what little remains of him is resurrected in a high tech mechanical exo-skeleton, and the company send him out on the pretext of fighting the crime which they are in fact complicit in. His memory and personality are gone, and he exists for no other reason than to do his job, with neither the promise nor the expectation of getting anything in return; exactly what those at the top of ladder would prefer of those at the bottom. A dystopian vision of the future in the 80s, and here we are in 2012… the absence of cyborg police officers aside, none of it seems too outlandish does it?

But let’s not make RoboCop out to be something it isn’t. We can go on about these serious themes and more besides – Verhoeven’s well-documented take on the material as a Jesus allegory, for instance – and make the film out to be some harrowing work of hard-hitting social commentary. But the real power of satire is that it takes all the forces of oppression and reduces them to nothing by making fun of them. The underlying absurdist humour of RoboCop is what really makes the film work; it’s a very, very funny film indeed, from the ridiculous yet eerily plausible TV commercials advertising designer heart replacements and family board games about nuclear war, to the councilman who takes city hall hostage with an Uzi, his demands including a bigger office and fancier car. Then there are the shady goings-on at OCP. Co-writer Ed Neumeier has said that half the fun was to take the archetypal 80s yuppies, who were perpetually adopting a military vernacular – insisting they were going to kill, destroy or blow away their competitors – and then show them literally trying to murder one another (not a million miles from American Psycho, then). Hence the wonderful conflict between Ronny Cox’s big bad Dick Jones and Miguel Ferrer’s up-and-comer Bob Morton, neither of whom is ultimately any less despicable than the other. Speaking of underlying humour, one thing I never picked up on until recently is that, as their confrontation occurs in the executive bathroom right after Jones leaves a cubicle – i.e. presumably straight after he’s taken a dump – Jones proceeds to grab Morton by the hair without having washed his hands first. He’s essentially stink-scalping him.

And boy, as gripping and amusing as that scene plays in the theatrical cut, for me it’s never been funnier than in the edited for TV version shown by ITV back in the 80s and 90s. To bring up Repo Man again, one of the great selling points of that film’s recent Blu-ray edition was the option to view the TV version, which is possibly even funnier than the original given that most of the “fucks” become “flips” and the “motherfuckers” become “melon farmers.” I truly wish there was a DVD of RoboCop that did likewise, as some of the replacement words were just hilarious. In the previously mentioned scene, Jones says of the Old Man, “once I even called him AIRHEAD!” Earlier, Morton exclaims to RoboCop, “you are gonna be one bad mother CRUSHER!” When the guy who holds up the convenience store opens fire on RoboCop, he repeatedly cries “WHY me!” And at other times, the film’s other notable big bad Clarence Boddicker yells “shut YOUR FACE up!” as well as “your company built the FREAKY thing… I don’t have time for this BALONEY!” And perhaps most notably of all, arguably the most celebrated line in the film becomes – “LADIES, LEAVE!”

Just what is it about “bitches leave”? How did it become the most frequently quoted line in such a heavily quotable film? It’s just one tiny morsel among the veritable salad bar of trash talk that makes up most of RoboCop’s dialogue. Clarence Boddicker alone has many other great lines, a couple of my personal favourites being “can you fly, Bobby?” and “ooh, guns guns guns!” So how did “bitches leave” became the iconic line? I suppose there are a number of key factors. In common with “I’ll be back” and “GORDON’S ALIVE?” it’s one of those lines that I don’t believe was ever consciously intended to become a catchphrase; the fact that, within the context of the film, it is kind of a throwaway remark adds to its perceived coolness. It also stands out that bit more as it’s the one line of dialogue uttered by the usually motormouthed villain in that particular scene. And of course, there’s the actor himself. The gleefully maniacal Boddicker is such an uncharacteristic role for Kurtwood Smith, generally cast as the straight-laced intellectual authority figure. (I used to make-believe as a younger man that Boddicker actually was the dad from Dead Poet’s Society, who turned to a sadistic life of crime having been unable to process the guilt of driving his theatrically-inclined son to suicide. Ah, youth.) In a curious way, though, the scene may actually demonstrate a hint of humanity in Boddicker; after all, he could easily have just gone ahead and murdered the models along with Morton. Does he have any real reason to let two witnesses live? Is it so they can go on to tell the tale, keeping his legend alive in the time-honoured fashion – or is it a display of mercy? Well, even if Boddicker is being merciful to the women, he’s doing it with a dash of his signature cruelty, dismissing them in such an unnecessarily rude and mean-spirited fashion. “Bitches leave,” honestly – does he kiss his mother with that mouth?

But enough about the baddies – sure, no great action movie is complete without them, but so too are they incomplete without great goodies. Nancy Allen’s Lewis, though surely the least developed of the core ensemble, is one of the best female characters in genre film of the time. Never overtly sexualised yet not de-feminised either, her gender is never made out to be a hindrance; as such, those who would accuse Verhoeven’s work of being misogynistic should take Lewis into consideration (not that the portrayal of women in Total Recall, Basic Instinct or Showgirls is quite so easy to defend). Indeed, the cops overall are the most sympathetic, relatable characters in the whole film, with a particularly endearing turn from the late Robert DoQui as the take-no-shit Sgt Reed. Neumeier has recounted his trepidation attending an advance screening for the LAPD, fearing the cops would be offended at how their profession was portrayed, but ultimately it went down gangbusters. And no wonder; in a story world riddled with corruption, the police are portrayed as the only people of real honour and principle. Would we be so ready to accept that representation today, I wonder…

And then, of course, there’s the Future of Law Enforcement himself. Whether we buy into Verhoeven’s Christ analogy or not, from the little we see of Murphy prior to falling under the bullets of Boddicker’s gang and the gizmos of OCP’s boffins, we’re given the impression he’s an inherently decent, salt of the earth guy next door. When he’s reborn as RoboCop, our reaction is complex. On the one hand, we’re mournful for the man who has lost everything and angry at the criminals, both street and corporate level, who stole it all from him; but on the other hand, good golly gosh he’s a badass. Yes, his look and characterisation – indeed, the tone and content of the film overall – owe a sizeable debt to the comic books of the time, with Judge Dredd and The Dark Knight Returns often noted as particularly influential, but RoboCop really is his own beast; a futuristic knight in shining armour, who retains a sense of honour, nobility and – yes – humanity, in spite of the atrocities going on all around him.

So much of that soul is down to Peter Weller. It’s hard now to imagine that Rutger Hauer, Michael Ironside and even Arnold Schwarzenegger were considered for the part, as – questions of physical suitability aside (the guy in the suit had to be skinny) – surely none of them could have brought that sense of purity and vulnerability that Weller brings to it. Look at his quiet self-satisfaction as he practices his cowboy quick-draw moves while Lewis buys coffee; even though he soon proves to be an efficient marksman and ruthless killer when necessary, there’s something so un-macho, even nerdy about him. When Boddicker’s gang blow him away, it really does hurt to watch, and when he removes his helmet in the final scenes it’s still quite a shocking and upsetting sight. Crucially, we are on his side from beginning to end. Every inch the blue collar everyman, Murphy is what we might now regard – if you’ll excuse me using the topical buzzword of the day – the embodiment of the 99%. The suits have fucked him over for all he’s worth to benefit themselves; we feel his pain and loss, and long to see him get his payback. And when he does, boy is it rewarding. When Murphy finally pumps Dick Jones full of lead and sends him out the skyscraper window, he’s hitting the 1% where it hurts for all of us.

Verhoeven and Neumeier both tell heart-warming stories on the DVD commentary of attending public screenings and hearing the audience reactions at the end; as the Old Man asks RoboCop his name, audiences roared “Murphy” in unison then burst into applause. A quarter of a century later, the film still has that power. All genre considerations aside, RoboCop is truly one of the best American movies of – and about – the 1980s, and there’s almost nothing about it that is not still relevant today. This being so, I won’t deny a cautious curiosity in how things develop with the upcoming remake. Of course it’s pretty much inconceivable that José Padilha’s film will in any way improve on Verhoeven’s, but given how heavily the themes still resonate there is at the very least scope for an interesting new take on the material. As to whether it’ll be anywhere near as fearless, hilarious, intricate and electrifying as the original; well, I wouldn’t buy that for a dollar…

And one last thing that’s amazing about RoboCop: the anthemic score by Basil Poledouris. What a shame the trailer for the original theatrical release didn’t see fit to include it.

*As a footnote, it was only whilst researching this article that I learned Alex Cox had at one point been in line to direct RoboCop, as well as later being offered the sequel. To think the man I grew up knowing as the host of Moviedrome might have been responsible for two of my watershed films. Perhaps Jones and Boddicker were right: good business is where you find it.

 

Horror In Short: 'Dirty Laundry'

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by Ben Bussey

Okay. There’s a distinct possibility you already know what this is. This short film starring Tom Jane premiered this past weekend at San Diego Comic Con and has been popping up on many sites and blogs today, most of which have not been shy about giving the game away. For the benefit of those fortunate enough to still be in the dark, I’m saying nothing but this: here comes a savage ten minutes. And fingers crossed, it might lead to something bigger and better.

Oh, and – no, it’s not strictly speaking horror. Even so, it’s most definitely NSFW, as you might have guessed.

Festival Report: Bradford Fantastic Films Weekend 2012

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Report by Ben Bussey

By way of an opening disclaimer, I must profess to feeling a little disingenuous classing this as a report on the Fantastic Films Weekend given I was only there for one day of it, Saturday the 16th of June. But a jolly nice day it was, which I’ve no doubt vouches for the two days either side of it having been equally enjoyable. This was the eleventh year of the event, which takes over the Pictureville and Cubby Broccoli cinema screens of Bradford’s famed National Media Museum. With a mouth-watering selection of old favourites and rare jewels from the last fifty-odd years of genre cinema and television, the festival was a veritable fan smorgasbord from which I was more than happy to take a few hearty bites. 

With the action split over two screens and the choice between the familiar and the hitherto unseen, we naturally took the road less travelled in most cases. Henceforth, Henry Selick’s endearing stop-motion adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, 80s undead stripper flick Vamp and the inimitable Halloween III: Season of the Witch were all passed up in favour of a trio of under-seen Hammer productions, and a genuine grindhouse original. Even so, I still found time to catch a couple of lifelong favourites on the big screen for the first time.

First of those old favourites – and, I won’t deny it, the key thing that drew me to the festival – was Fred Dekker’s seminal 1987 comedy horror The Monster Squad. Now, there’s a hell of a lot I could say about this one, but given that its twenty-fifth anniversary is only a month or two away I’ll save my superlatives for now. Suffice to say The Monster Squad is supremely close to my heart, being the film that got me into horror in the first place, and it remains a real source of joy to me to this day. The chance to see it on the big screen as intended, particularly in an auditorium as nice as the Pictureville, was an opportunity I couldn’t possibly pass up. That said, I must admit I was a tad disappointed that the screening was of a somewhat murky, pixelated digital copy rather than a 35mm print, though I acknowledge this was not for lack of trying on the part of the organisers. Still, given that the film is yet to receive a Region 2 DVD release (the shame!), this might be the only chance many in the audience have yet had to see it. And even in a digital format, seeing it on the big screen still throws into focus little details that might not have been noticed before, even by one who has seen the film as often as I have (and believe me, I’ve watched The Monster Squad a great many times…) I could say more on the subject – and I assure you, I will be doing so in the not-too distant future – but that’ll do for now. Moving on…

Next up in Pictureville was a real curiosity, and a welcome one, in the form of Hammer’s Captain Clegg (1962) (which, yes, is also known as Night Creatures in some territories, hence inspiring the name of that band). We tend to forget that Hammer didn’t just make horror, but popular films of all kinds, and this film serves as a good representation of that less celebrated aspect of the company’s persona. An oddball blend of mystery, ghost story and swashbuckler, it follows the enigmatic inhabitants of a quiet small town when the king’s men arrive to investigate suspected smuggling. Peter Cushing heads up the cast as an unusual vicar with an alarming dark mop of grey-streaked hair, with an ensemble including a young Oliver Reed as a fairly dull romantic lead who gets to indulge in a bit of fisticuffs and wrestle a fair few snogs out of the delectable Yvonne Romain. It’s all typically cut-price and nonsensical – leave it to Hammer to make a pirate film that’s set almost entirely on land – but it’s teeming with the dark wit and anti-authoritarian undertones that we so often find in Hammer. The 35mm print looked great for the most part; the projection in the first few minutes had a distracting wobble which was quickly corrected, and from then on, the little scratches and occasional jumps just added to the rustic charm.

Next up in the more intimate Cubby Broccoli screen were two early black and white TV films from Hammer (digital copies, but perfectly decent ones). Directed by Curt Siodmak, famed for writing Universal’s Wolf Man, Tales of Frankenstein (1958) is a pilot for a TV show that never happened. A fairly standard tale of the mad Baron (here played by Anton Diffring) and his experiments, it opens with Frankenstein bemoaning the lack of a decent brain to make his creation work properly; at which point, who should turn up on his doorstep but a terminally ill man and his wife, who have sought out Frankenstein in the desperate hope that he can help them. Entertaining though it is, in some ways it’s not surprising a series never came of it. I mean, what would they have done, put a different brain in the creature every week? See the monster take on a new personality in each episode, like some macabre variation on Quantum Leap…? Even so, it’s a fun little creature feature, and a pleasant window back to the days when wailing theremins, misty graveyards and flashes of lightning over Gothic rooftops had not yet become the stuff of lampoons and Scooby-Doo cartoons.

The Man in Black (1949) makes for fairly surprising viewing today given that it provides an entirely straight role for Sid James. Though he had a long and illustrious career in straight drama, it’s almost impossible not to immediately identify him as the notorious old perv of so many Carry On films, so much so that when told that his character in The Man in Black is the country’s premier exponent of yoga, one can’t help but immediately picture him stood at the back of the class with Bernard Bresslaw, barking his signature “hyuk-hyuk” as all the girls bend over. However, that’s a far cry from what we have here. Following the efforts of James’ conniving second wife and stepdaughter to cheat his daughter out of her inheritance in the aftermath of his mysterious death, it’s a supremely twisty-turny melodrama filled with yet more of that classic dark wit, in which everyone has an ulterior motive and is out to get someone else. I’m sure they could take the same script today and make a mean episode of Midsomer Murders out of it.

Coming up after that, whilst Keri took in the short films (which you can read about here) I headed back over to Pictureville for my other old favourite of the day, the 1968 sci-fi camp classic Barbarella.  Much as The Monster Squad instilled in me a love for horror, this film instilled in me a love for films in which gorgeous women in outer space take their clothes off and have sex a lot… I jest of course. That instinct was already in me long before I saw this film; it’s genetic, I think. Anyway, for a film that I have in years gone by seen erroneously stocked in the adult DVD section in stores, Barbarella is actually considerably tamer than the uninitiated might anticipate; but at the same time, it may also be somewhat darker than expected (the very rumination that inspired this article the other day). There isn’t actually much nudity and the sex all occurs off-screen, but we do have an abundance of weird and wonderful glittering sets and costumes which make no attempt to pass themselves off as realistic. The result is somewhere between a Carry On film and Flash Gordon, filtered through a very 60s flower power sensibility, yet the film is also quite unflinching in its portrayal of cruelty and suffering. To fully embrace peace and love necessitates confronting the horrors of war and hate, I suppose. Another one projected in good old fashioned 35mm, there were again jumps and scratches aplenty, but certainly nothing to detract from the pleasure of this old gem, at least not for one as susceptible to its charms as myself.

Wrapping up the day, and indeed the festival for me was I Drink Your Blood (1970), and I daresay that was as good a film as any to end on. A joyously absurd mix of Satan-worshipping hippies, small town hicks and sociopathic pie-poisoning pre-teens, it’s so grindhouse that if I hadn’t been told any different I might have assumed it was yet another contemporary take on the genre contrived to tick all the boxes. Cheap and cheerful to the extreme with the obligatory tacked-on overtones of morality, it’s pretty much everything you expect from a madcap midnight movie. As such, it was entirely fitting that the very rare 35mm print the festival had procured was battered to buggery, drained of colour to the point that the whole screen seemed to glow fluorescent pink, and so worn out that it actually broke about two thirds of the way in, resulting in a delay of around ten minutes. Initially I suspected this might have just been showmanship on the part of the organisers, trying to provide that same ‘real grindhouse experience’ that Rodriguez and Tarantino were so keen to mass-produce, but unless they kept the act up very well it would seem to have been genuine. And no, it didn’t detract from the experience at all. Indeed, it gave my fellow audience member Gavin Baddeley time to advise me to look out for the rabid workman who, during a chase scene, would accidentally lose his helmet, and then stop to pick it up. Many laughs were had all around.

All things considered, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to attend all three days of the Fantastic Films Weekend. The National Media Museum is a lovely place to visit any time, home to Britain’s first IMAX screen and innumerable treasures from the history of photography, film, TV and computing; festival attendees were given the chance to take a look at some rare artefacts from the Hammer archive including design sketches, sculptures and props including – gasp – Christopher Lee’s original fangs. There were also – double gasp – a few original Ray Harryhausen models nearby. Add to that a friendly team, and of course a great selection of films and reasonably priced passes, and everyone’s a winner. I sigh to survey the list of films I missed: Big Trouble in Little China in 70mm, The Quatermass Xperiment, Pieces, Fright Night, and more besides. Of course film festivals that showcase the new are very important, but there’s also a lot to be said for venerating the old; taking greats of yesteryear which we’ve only ever seen on DVD or VHS or perhaps have never seen at all, slapping them up there on a full-size cinema screen as their makers intended, and then enjoying those films side by side with similarly inclined film lovers. More of it, I say. Once details of the twelfth Fantastic Films Weekend are announced, my ears will certainly prick up.

 

Festival Report: Bradford Fantastic Films Weekend – The Short Films

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Part 1 of Brutal As Hell’s coverage of the 11th Fantastic Films Weekend at Bradford’s National Media Museum, Fri 15th- Sun 17th June 2012:

Report on Saturday’s Short Films Compendium by Keri O’Shea

I’m a huge fan of the short film medium. Some of my favourite festival discoveries over the years have been short films, so I was excited to see what Bradford Fantastic Films had to offer in this department. Well, the strongest of the bunch were absolutely superb, and the weakest were rather weak – though this may be overkill speaking on my part, as the first film we saw was Perished (2011), which despite competent handling and being nicely shot, suffered for being ‘another zombie short film’, and I feel like I’ve seen more than my share of those. The set-up is rather a simple one: the dead are walking in contemporary Australia, a living man is holed up in a shed on his property and has to decide what to do to escape. Now, I don’t think the zombie genre has been completely wrung of possibilities, but on occasion, and with respect to director Stefan Radanovich, it feels as though it very nearly has when the same tropes crop up over and over. Radanovich has an impressive short-filmography to his name, though, and obviously has talent as a director, so I’d love to check out some of his other work sometime.

There was another zombie short during the set, too – this was Chomp! (2011) by British directors Adam and Joe Horton; a comic skit on boy zombie meets girl zombie, where two undead’s lips meet during a jolly bit of gut-munching and they fall for each other – referencing the spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp (no, really!) along the way. At just four minutes, it’s a comic fragment as much as anything else and can hardly be said to overstay its welcome, but I did have to struggle against wondering why we needed more zombies…or indeed, and this is a general observation, why the end of the world always happens when people are wearing quite so much white. Still, Chomp! had a punchline, and wasn’t badly-executed.

A short film which started with an intriguing premise was Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise (2011): director Kelly Sears has developed a haunting visual effect here, superimposing old yearbook photographs onto a school building background, and having them move just slightly – the overall effect is quite unsettling. The story told within the film – of a strange air of apathy descending over the year-group of an American high school during the seventies (communicated via on-screen text, not dialogue) generated some nice feelings of creep, though appearance and idea badly needed some more exposition. As I’ve said elsewhere, a very little will suffice in these cases – but I felt too much as though I’d been left out of some big secret, made to feel engaged with wondering what the fuck was going on and then cut loose.

Striking the balance between tantalising the audience and tying things up must be a hard thing for any director to decide upon and accomplish, however long a time-frame they have. The sins of Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise are duplicated in Finnish short The Hunting Ground (2011). Though The Hunting Ground is more linear and more conventional, it sets up an interesting story but leaves it rather rootless, though it manages to get a few naked women in there for good measure. Two men heading into the middle of nowhere encounter a young woman lying in the road. She’s unconscious, but largely uninjured. They pick her up, and take her with them. She has very little to say for herself, but seems happy and grateful for their help. That is, until one of the men makes a pass at her, and she takes flight into the woods. How does this situation resolve itself? Well, it doesn’t really, although it hints in a few directions. Again, I felt engaged enough by the premise that I wanted a little more, just a little more, to tell me what I’d just seen. In its favour, this film has some superb long shots, the Finnish countryside in which the action takes place is beautiful on-screen, and the performances from all of the limited cast certainly generate interest.

The Little Mermaid (2011) is another fragmentary affair, a sliver of mood rather than a tale, but one which boasts attractive sets, setting and costumes: we are taken to an old-time freak show, and a man who makes his dollars exhibiting a real life mermaid. So, he’s exploiting her – but is he safe from being exploited? That would be a no, then. Being unable to stand or attack him conventionally, she goes for a siren song to lure him near…from a director with an extensive short film retinue, I really wanted to like this little period piece more than I did, but I found it hard to feel invested in what I was seeing. Still, the idea of mermaids as malign entities is a good theme for horror, and mythical creatures on the screen are always welcome. (Editor’s note – we’ve previously featured The Little Mermaid in our Horror In Short thread; you can read Marc’s thoughts on the film here.)

Moving on to my three favourite short films of the selection, Decapoda Shock (2011) managed to tell a complete story in its ten minutes – like a sci-fi movie in microcosm, and an ambitious mix of media, splicing animation with live action in a way which really worked. The whole thing felt like an old-school comic strip – economical, but telling a hell of a lot in a matter-of-fact way. When an astronaut is sent to investigate a mysterious planet and gets attacked by a lobster-like alien creature, he mutates –  but survives to return to Earth, and do something about the conspiracy which got him feeling so crabby (sorry). He takes revenge against the Evil Corporation who set him up, and as this necessitates a part-man, part-crustacean in a spacesuit riding a horse through a desert, I’d say we can be truly thankful for that. The pace and style of this short are both very well-realised and the humour worked. This film was a lot of fun, and it was great to see the city of Madrid on the screen too…on the screen, as a man with mandibles and pincers rows through Retiro Park. Magnificent.

And now for something completely different, to anything, ever. Stop-motion animation is the medium of choice for the weird world of Bobby Yeah (2011), and boy, does it work well. Now though, I’m faced with the difficult job of explaining what happens in this gem. Right – a mischievous little fella has nicked off with a limbless, blue-eyed pet. He gets it back to his digs, and is in the process of looking it over when – ooh – he spots a big red button on its body. Buttons are meant to be pressed, yeah? He tries to resist, but he hits the button. Cue a very stressful afternoon for our Bobby as he’s beset by weird cycles of transformation, birth and…well, shall I just say that I liked the bit where Bobby beats the formerly-crow-headed golliwog monster with its detached penis which is now a skull-headed club? That’ll suffice. The essential lesson in all of this, if there is such a thing, is to not steal, but even if you must, resist pressing those tantalising fucking buttons (though I am very glad Bobby did). This is a unique piece of filmmaking. Bravo, Robert Morgan, you decidedly deserve your BAFTA nomination for this one.

Last, but not least, another cautionary tale, but one which might be a little bit more familiar to most of us, at least in the possibility of something like it happening. Bear (2011) made me laugh out loud with its impeccable sense of comic timing, and the deft way it linked this humour to an escalatingly grim situation. It’s no mean feat. When a man forgets his girlfriend’s birthday, it seems he’s in the doghouse for the duration. He plonks himself down in front of the TV. She gets dressed, in a huff, and goes out on her mountain bike. But he hasn’t forgotten her birthday at all – he’s planned a special birthday picnic, and he swings into action to intercept her out in the countryside, getting into his car to get there in time. How romantic! Except that – well, you know that whole ‘best laid plans’ thing? The pace here is just brilliant, and the story gives the audience just enough detail and development. It has a snappy punchline, too, which short films benefit hugely by. This is a great piece of work by director Nash Edgerton – tragic and comic by turns.

Read part 2 of our Fantastic Films Weekend report here.

Interview: Johannes Roberts on 'Storage 24,' 'F' and Working in Genre

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Interview conducted by Keri O’Shea

British director Johannes Roberts has been making movies for over ten years now: these have ranged from the Tom Savini-dispatching Forest of the Damned (2005) to the first made-for-mobile series When Evil Calls (2006) – but to date, Johannes is probably best-known for the urban nightmare ‘F’ (2010), a film I loved. This year is promising to be a busy one: Storage 24, Johannes’ newest film, is due for its UK release on June 29th. Brutal as Hell were lucky enough to catch up with Johannes for a quick chat about S24, as well as his career to date…

BAH: Your new movie, Storage 24, is just about to get released. Firstly – what attracted you to this project? And are you happy with the result?

Johannes Roberts: I got the script while I was filming Roadkill over in Ireland. I’m really attracted to sterile locations – schools, hospitals, airports and so on – so it felt like an extension of ‘F’, really. On top of that, it meant I got to do my own alien movie. Working with Noel Clarke and Universal were obviously big factors, too.

I love the finished movie: it’s worked out really well. I remember seeing Noel after he’d watched the completed film for the first time and he was beaming. That’s a great thing to see.

BAH: Before you started on S24 – with one exception – you’ve written as well as directed your films. How different is directing a film you haven’t also written?

JR: I think, as a director, you have to take total ownership over the material. I treated it as if it were my script, lived and breathed it as if they were my characters. I think that’s really important – otherwise you’re just the guy organising where the camera should go.

BAH: You’re taking S24 to the Sitges Film Festival in Spain this year, where it’ll be entered into competition – considering the calibre of the festival, this is a big thing indeed. As well as this, Sitges will be showing a retrospective screening of ‘F’: now that it’s a couple of years since you made ‘F’ and the dust has settled a bit, how do you feel about the film and how it was received?

JR: I am still in love with that film. It was such a big thing for me to get a theatrical release on such a tiny film, and to get such a major response from the major critics was just incredible. It’s funny though – a lot of people hated ‘F’, and it died at the cinema. It just totally missed its audience, and I hope one day it will find it. Whether it will is a maybe, maybe not. But for me? That movie changed my career. Since then, I haven’t stopped working. And I still love the ending. I wouldn’t change a thing about that movie.

BAH: You’ve touched on this a little already in terms of how some people received ‘F’: how important are your reviews to you?

JR: Hmm. That’s tricky. Less than they used to be, maybe, but you always ignore the good ones and feel the bad ones. I still take it all quite personally, but I don’t hunt out reviews like I used to. When it comes to Storage 24, I’d love it to find an audience much more than I’m worried about how many stars it gets in a magazine.

BAH: As a director who has stuck with genre cinema throughout his career to date, specifically horror & sci-fi, what do you think of the horror movie scene these days? What, if anything, would you change?

JR: I really like this ‘found footage’ thing that’s happening: I don’t think I’ve yet seen the definitive version of that, and I think it’s a really interesting new route for films. I think sci-fi will become a bigger and bigger thing too, because you can do so much more for less money now. That said, I think there is still a lot of shit out there. I’d just love to be scared again. I think the genre is such a great opportunity to explore really interesting, dark themes that you just can’t explore anywhere else.

BAH: And finally – what has been your proudest achievement so far in your career?

JR: Ha, that I’m still working. Don’t think many people ever saw that one coming! Also, I think by the time you put this interview out, the billboards and phone-box posters will be up for Storage 24. Now that’s pretty fucking cool.

Universal will release Storage 24 to British cinemas from 29th June – watch out for our review. Meanwhile, you can read Ben’s review of F from FrightFest 2010 HERE.

Editorial: When DVD Goes On The Rocks?

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by Keri O’Shea

At the time of writing, one of the things which really distinguishes horror fans from everyone else, regardless of how they look, where they are and what else they do, is the fact that they’re collectors. Often, they’re serious collectors. Come to our houses, and you’ll likely see shelves weighed down with stacks and stacks of movies. Fellow fans will be impressed; non-fans will look at you ever after as if you’re insane, but the fact is that having these personal movie libraries matters a hell of a lot to many of us.

The format of these collections has, of course, changed through the years. Some people are still full-on aficionados of VHS, and reserve pride-of-place for the rarest and best which they can get their hands on. There’s a rare pleasure to be had from VHS, to be sure. Nostalgia for the days when many of us discovered the joys of film for the first time not only makes it easier to forget that there were a lot of problems with this format, but in fact, there are folk out there for whom the frustrations of banding, fogging, and dodgy tracking are now fondly regarded to the point where there’s a film festival here in the UK which will be showing some of its horror films on video cassettes. The US has some similar events going on this year too. Say ‘video nasty’ to anyone visiting this site and they’ll be able to talk to you about the phenomenon. Fact is, however ‘obsolete’ a medium becomes, there are people who will always love it regardless. Having these things, these artefacts – finding them, buying them, swapping them – is all part of the fun. Not everyone has enough literal and metaphorical space in their lives for all the different formats, though…

When DVD was born in 1995, some committed collectors put their cassettes safely aside, but many abandoned their VHS libraries as enthusiastically as they’d built them up, and over the next few years moved over to the new format. But, whether people ditched video or not, DVD certainly meant interesting things for cult film. The word ‘revolutionary’ gets overused, but this new format really was something; for starters, it was a triumph of collaboration, a compromise between interested companies which headed off another format war similar to the Betamax vs. VHS débâcle of the 1970s and 1980s. And, for those of us with, shall we say, more ‘niche tastes’, DVD offered a new wave of optimism: suddenly, it looked like we could expect unprecedented quality, and the accessibility of films which we thought were lost, or at least, which we thought would only ever be available to us on cassette.

The new scope for smaller labels and specialisms meant that new generations of fandom could emerge, and we suddenly stood a chance at seeing films which had hitherto been known to us only by reputation, or via tantalising stills in horror tomes. Companies like Mondo Macabro, for example, could let us glimpse into filmmaking scenes in parts of the world where we had no idea they existed; Tartan Films really swung into action on the DVD front, giving many of us our first experience of what they termed ‘Asia Extreme’ cinema, and I believe you could make an argument that their efforts to bring the films of the Far East to such wide audiences in the West actually helped to change the face of horror in our times. Whether you were enthusiastic or more dubious about the new-fangled DVD technology, you have to admit, it opened up a brave new world of cult cinema.

Nothing stands still, though. Sad evidence of this is that the aforementioned Tartan Films closed their doors back in 2008. No sooner had DVD established itself as the medium of choice, than a new format was around the corner – which turned out to be Blu-ray, after a format war did take place this time. To date, the uptake of Blu-ray hasn’t been as sharp as DVD, but it’s certainly a medium which is growing in popularity (just look at some of the recent glowing reviews here at Brutal as Hell) and, whilst DVDs are still being made, the market is being pulled in several different directions these days, with Blu-ray surely one of the factors behind it. Whilst I haven’t made the leap to the new format, many of you have, and have become as passionate about building your Blu-ray collections as you formerly were your DVD collections. However, many of you whom I have spoken to have begun to jettison your DVDs now, just as you did your videos before that. As there still exists something of a divide between what gets a DVD, and what gets a Blu-ray release, it may be that some of the DVDs you have now passed on will never get a release to the newer, currently more exclusive format. In scaling down horror collections by opting only for Blu-ray releases, it’s possible that a lot of movies which benefited by the initial enthusiasm which saw a lot of obscurities get a DVD release will just… disappear again.

Of course, the sheer scale of competition in DVD-land is unprecedented. It’s never been harder for genre films which couldn’t hope to get a Blu-ray release to find their audience, and for a variety of reasons, great films seem to miss out on a release whilst derivative fare makes it out there, again and again. This is frustrating, but it’s only part of our changing picture…because these days, we have the possibility of streaming and downloading too…

The growth of broadband, the rise and rise of consoles which can handle multi-tasking between games and movies and the increase in means for accessing films via the internet – illegally or otherwise – is surely another kick in the guts for the ever-depreciating DVD market (and isn’t necessarily good news for Blu-ray, come to that). Speaking of downloading, I’m always surprised at the prevalence of illegal downloading amongst people who consider themselves film fans, or the outrage that anyone would seek to limit this type of theft by legal means. Of course filmmakers deserve protection. Information sharing is one thing, but illegally downloading movies means that the author of that particular film is circumvented, any financial returns for them all but wiped out. Will it ‘raise their profile’? Possibly, but it won’t generate enough capital to allow them to make another film and might make it next to impossible that they even get to add their release to the already-swarming market – and the market matters. You need cash to make movies. If you’re not able to make movies, then what use is a profile, anyway? From my point of view, there’s nothing more heartbreaking than seeing a hard-up director or writer tweet that their movie – the movie they re-mortgaged their house and lost their wife over – has hit the torrent sites before its release.

This bullshit hurts fans and filmmakers alike, and inevitably exerts an extra pressure on the already-stretched movie scene we purport to love. Sure, legit streaming options such as Netflix – which at present accounts for 20%-30% of US internet traffic at peak times – at least give something back to filmmakers, but you’d better believe they can be punitive, and we can expect a lot of upheaval in this corner of the market over the next few years. Already things are shifting again. Netflix will flounder, then something else more profitable will take its place, and so on. And, if we’re seeing the Wars of the Roses over there, what do you think it might mean for horror and genre fans? The best case scenario is that a committed group of fans within these upcoming companies enshrine a dynamic group of new and classic horror/genre films within their books and preserve this mentality. Or, they might not. It might be the last thing on their minds. And if they don’t – if market pressures steer them towards more big-budget fare – you will need your own collections, else you will get very little say in what you see.

Of course streaming movies has its place, but what I would say to those of you out there is this: take your time. To me, the flux we’re seeing currently means it’s even more important that we keep a hold of our own libraries, both for expediency as well as out of a love for it; there’s always been something of the risk that guys in suits who have nothing in common with us get to choose what we see, but the increased downward pressure of our current situation could mean that a lot of the rarities disappear again. Keep them on your shelves, folks, and keep adding to your collections, because if movies ever start to move over to streaming releases only, we’ll have nothing to collect, and nothing to show for our passion. Make the most of the options we have, because we are living – as the saying goes – in ‘interesting times’.

 

Cannes 2012 Preview: Jen and Sylvia Soska's 'American Mary'

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A short but sweet review from Nia Edwards-Behi

If I may indulge in some flagrant cliché abuse, the Soska Sisters are not just going places, but they’re paving the way to an exciting, vital and game-changing career in genre filmmaking. The powerhouses behind Dead Hooker in a Trunk have made their second film, American Mary, which has received its first screening at the Marche du Film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film stars Katharine Isabelle as Mary, a broke medical student who finds herself mired in a bizarre world of underground surgery.

Mary is a completely different beast to Dead Hooker. Where Dead Hooker is a loving tribute to B-movies and grindhouse cinema, Mary is a stylish, artful and darkly funny tragedy. This difference is the Soskas’ masterstroke – even the most doubting spectator would struggle to deny the absolute versatility on display between the two films.

Mary is a significantly darker film, too. For all its laughs – and boy, are there laughs – Mary is a particularly discomforting tragedy, the Soskas’ passion for interesting storytelling as evident as their passion for genre filmmaking. The story is filled with twisted yet likeable characters, with standout performances from Katherine Isabelle as Mary and Tristan Risk as Beatress Johnson. Risk is captivating as the bizarre Beatress, with many of the film’s funniest moments emerging from her quirks. Isabelle owns the role of Mary completely and consistently confirms what an impressive actress she is. The supporting talent rounds off a cast of desirable undesirables, all monsters in their own ways – and particularly entertaining is the Soskas’ own, incredibly memorable, cameo turn. The film is an impressive feast of visuals, from grotesque prosthetic work to beautiful set design. Mary’s world may seem unfamiliar or far-fetched, but it is wholly believable.

The work on display in American Mary is that of seasoned, mature filmmakers. That this is only a sophomore effort demonstrates the absolute talent harnessed by the Soska sisters. This is the most original film I’ve seen for a very long time, and I can’t help but feel that the Soskas have the potential to lead the way in an enlivening of genre filmmaking. American Mary deserves an incredibly wide release; its story as accessible to non-genre fans as it is satisfying for those of us who love the darker parts of cinema, and impressive for anyone who claims to be a fan of cinema.

Keep your eyes peeled for news on American Mary’s future release.

Warrior Week: Steph’s Top 5 Tips to Ensure That You Survive the Apocalypse and its Aftermath

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by Stephanie Scaife

*spoilers ahead*

Okay, so let’s not get too pernickety about naming sub-genres here. There are always a lot of grumblings over what’s apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic and dystopian, however one thing is clear regardless – the world has gone to shit and you’re going to have to fight for survival and adapt to your new (and often hazardous) surroundings one way or another. If there is anything I’ve learned from the movies it’s that honing your skills and either becoming a warrior or learning adept skills of warrior evasion are what’s key, regardless of whether you’re living in the aftermath of world war three or in an alternate history dystopian New York City. So as part of Brutal As Hell’s Warrior Week I’m going to explore some of your potential choices for when that time finally comes, so pay close attention and make sure to carefully adhere to my essential survival tips.

5 – Learn to Drive and Start Stockpiling Fuel

If you want to survive in the post-apocalyptic wasteland then you’ll need to a) be able to cover as much ground as possible and b) be able to out run any pursuers. The key to this, clearly, is to be able to drive and drive well. Picking up a few tips from a mechanic could also be useful, especially when modifying your vehicle of choice. You could go for motorbikes adorned with glowing skulls, as favoured by the Bronx Warriors in the far off future of 1990 where the Bronx in NYC has been officially declared no man’s land and is ruled by The Riders, a tough motorcycle gang.

What I wouldn’t recommend however is rollerblades as a mode of transportation, as seen in Prayer of the Rollerboys, where a gang of white supremacists terrorise Corey Haim in a futuristic LA and market an addictive drug that renders non-Caucasian users infertile (and yes, this is a real film).

Now, you could also do a lot worse than the supercharged V-8 Pursuit Special that Max drives in The Road Warrior. A modified version of the car he drives in the first Mad Max with a large gas tank (useful when you never know where you next supply of gas is coming from). But as you can see in the clip below what you really want and what will give you the greatest chance of survival is a giant armoured tanker truck!

4 – Pick a Theme and a Catchy Nickname

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the potential dystopian futures it’s that creativity is never dampened by difficult living situations, it fact in many instances it seems to take precedence. Not only do we develop a greater sense of style (see number 2) but we also get pretty inventive when it comes to names and themes for our warriors. Take The Warriors for example, set in a dystopian vision of New York City where the numerous gangs rule the streets. To succeed at this you need your gang to be distinguishable, this means laying claim to a particular stake of land, a particular style must be uniformly adopted, signature weapons must be wielded and nicknames must be assigned.

Of course we have our titular anti-heroes The Warriors, who wear leather vests with The Warriors logo emblazoned on the back (a winged skull), a knife, Molotov cocktail or just plain good old fashioned fists are their weapons of choice. Their leader Swan may not have a particularly manly name if ever there was one, but I still wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him.

Then we have (my personal favourite) The Baseball Furies. The Furies never speak and clearly they’re a few bases short of a homerun, making them one of the most feared gangs in New York City. They dress in baseball uniforms, leather baseball caps and brandish uniquely painted faces and are more than a little treacherous when it comes to wielding a bat. If you’ve played the videogame then you’ll know that they are lead by a man named Cobb who wields an even deadlier dual-baseball bat that he uses to fire balls at his enemies with deadly accuracy.

The Lizzies are a kick ass all-female gang that inhabit Union Square, they like to keep their look fairly subtle so as not to draw too much attention and to enable them to lure their(predominantly) male victims to the confines of their hangout before pulling guns and knives on their unsuspecting victims. They are led by a tough broad by the name of Starr and these are some ladies that you do not want to go messing with as they are clearly able to hold their own in male dominated gang warfare.

Far less cool are the somewhat inappropriately named The Punks, dressed in dungarees and roller skates these guys really should have reconsidered when coming up with a theme. The whole inbred farmer look isn’t exactly helped by the fact that the members have names like Hog and Lumpy who like to hang around in subway bathrooms late at night.

So get your thinking cap on, round up your toughest friends and get familiar with some easily accessible weaponry, because it’s going to be a tough world out there and if you want to be a warrior you’re going to have to learn how to come out and play.

3 – Kill Kevin Costner Before it’s Too Late…

It will mean pre-empting both The Postman and Waterworld and thus ensuring that neither were prophetic, because really the world of the future would most certainly be a better place without Kevin Costner delivering mail and/or evolving to have webbed feet. I don’t know about you, but that is definitely not the post-apocalypse of my dreams. If the icebergs melt then I’m more than happy to accept Dennis Hopper as my warrior overlord. So let’s just nip this one in the bud right now shall we?

2 – Change Your Style

Jeans and a t-shirt just ain’t gonna cut it after the apocalypse. Especially if you want to be a bad ass. The general rule also appears to be the fewer the clothes the better, so prepare to do a few push-ups along with the day-to-day chore of survival…

Option A (Female)

If there was anything to learn from Doomsday (besides how not to make a movie) then it was that cleavage and face paint is paramount. You’d also better start those leather work classes now and stockpiling nail polish and eye liner if you wish to complete this look – that is unless a few Avon ladies end up getting quarantined in Scotland with you…

Option B (Female)

The Tank Girl look is far more achievable I feel; it’s definitely a more of a scavenged lets-see-what-I-find-lying-around look which will accommodate the lack of free time you’ll have whilst fighting for survival against Malcolm McDowell and Ice-T dressed as a kangaroo…

Option C (Female)

I feel that ultimately the Aunty Entity look is the perhaps best choice for all concerned. I mean just check out those chainmail suspenders! Let’s not worry about how uncomfortable it may be to be dressed entirely in chainmail in the Australian outback and instead focus on how awesome you’d look whilst hosting those gladiatorial battles in the Thunderdome arena…

Option A (Male)

Snake Plissken. Need I say anymore? I don’t think so.

Option B (Male)

Mohawk – check, feathers – check, bondage gear – check… well then, I think you’re all set to lead your warrior motorcycle gang into battle. Just don’t forget Humungus.

Option C (Male)

If I was a dude and I lived in a dystopian future over run with Exterminator warriors then I’d totally dress like this, hell even if I were a dude right now I’d totally dress like this. Seriously guys, this is clearly the way forward.

1 – Consider Becoming a Cannibal

Let’s face it, if you’re going get through the hard times ahead your morals will to have to go on standby. Indefinite standby. Your first option is what I like to call The Opportunist, which is exemplified in the only redeeming scene from the otherwise abysmal Hughes Brothers movie The Book of Eli in which Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour play an elderly couple having survived by effectively booby trapping their house, keeping a large stash of automatic weapons to hand and pretty much just killing and eating anybody who shows up on their doorstep. Admittedly The Opportunist is a rare breed as they generally fly solo or in small groups.

This is where getting yourself into a gang becomes an option, making you The Savvy Cannibal. In John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road we have a particular breed of Savvy Cannibal – roaming the streets in gangs on armoured trucks rounding up meat, because what the Savvy Cannibal knows is that the key to success is to keep a readily available supply of fresh meat available. There’s little point in killing someone outright when you’d have no way of storing all that precious food, so instead what you do is keep your food supply alive, taking a limb here and a limb there (of course it’s important to cauterise the to avoid that Sunday roast you got planned for the next weekend bleeding out). The Savvy Cannibal also has an appreciation for tender meats, meaning that fertile woman must be impregnated to provide a constant supply of newborn meat, human veal if you will, which if the book is to be believed is best served spit roasted immediately after birth.

My personal favourite cannibal is the The Animal Lover. Imagine you live in a world where you must constantly evade gangs of marauders, warrior mutants known as Screamers, and crazy androids with only your misanthropic, telepathic dog for company, as can be seen in L.Q. Jones’ A Boy and His Dog. You finally meet the girl of your dreams (something rare in a world where women are few and far between) and she wants to take you into a city fashioned underground where everyone wears mime make-up and men are farmed for their semen in a bid to up the population. Then after escaping from the crazy underground city with your girlfriend you find your beloved dog close to starvation – what do you do? The answer of course, is what any sane person would do; you kill your girlfriend so that your dog can eat and in doing so provide my favourite ending to any film ever.

Of course if all of civilization hasn’t completely crumpled and a dystopian utopia is possible, then you might want to consider becoming The Business Cannibal and investing strongly in Soylent Green…

 

Warrior Week: Annie & Keri's Top VILFs (as in V for Viking…)

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A Labour of love from Annie Riordan and Keri O’Shea

Annie: Summer, 2003. Pirates Of The Caribbean had only been in theaters for a month and I was already sick as shit of Jolly Roger eye patches and “Talk Like A Pirate” day. I mean, sure – it was a cool movie and I’d enjoyed it, but the sudden and inexplicable worship of All Things Pirate which had exploded in its wake had completely passed me by. Pirates just don’t do it for me. If I want to watch a whisper thin guy prance about in knee high boots, puffy shirts, bigass hats and shitloads of jewelry, I’ll watch Flyguy in “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.” Pirates do not instill any fear in me. The idea of going up against one threatens me about as much as the thought of being bitchslapped to death by Estelle Getty. 2003 marked the first time I ever won an argument using just one word, when a young coworker – with visions of Johhny Depp unbuckling his swash dancing in her head, no doubt – tried her articulated best to convince me that pirates were the most fearsome badasses ever to circumnavigate the globe. I waited until she’d finished and simply said: “Vikings.”

I saw the realization hit her, saw the mental image of Johnny Depp in his swishy little outfit getting his rum-soaked ass kicked by a seven foot tall Norseman whose beard alone probably outweighed Depp by forty pounds or more. She promptly shut up. Yeah, that’s right. Hammer of the Gods, bitch.

That said however, there is a serious lack of movies about Vikings. Edit: GOOD movies about Vikings. And I don’t even count the ones made before the 80s because Kirk Douglas looks about as much like a fucking Viking as my ass does. Vikings did not have Gillette razors, Brylcreem or shiny pectoral oil, okay? They were hairy and stinky and nobody fucked with them. They could pick you up with one hand and crush you against their mighty foreheads like beer cans. They were not pretty little bitches in foofoo fabrics. When they wanted a new outfit, they plowed up a moose’s ass, ate it from the inside out and just wore it when they were done. Hey, you thought Peter Steele had a big dick? Viking dicks were taller than Peter Steele wearing platform shoes. Vikings were never meant to be portrayed as Sexy or Hawt…but some of them were anyway.

Gunnar, Pathfinder (Clancy Brown)

Keri: Ah, Pathfinder. The fact that I can happily objectify your actors means I can steadfastly ignore the anti-Viking bias in this frankly substance-free, but often picturesque movie. In Pathfinder’s world, y’see, the Norsemen are all degenerate barbarians, closer to orcs than men, and – significantly – they’re the ones speaking a subtitled language here, while the Native Americans they encounter are all jolly nice and speak English to boot. English! But anyway: cartoon strip rendition of Apocalypto this may well be, but I’m about to overlook any bias against the world’s first naval superpower by focusing on Gunnar, played by Clancy Brown. Yeah, I could have gone for main man Karl Urban, the Norse guy brought up by Native Americans, but to be perfectly frank, I’m beyond the time in my life where I can enthuse over beardless novices. He’s just a bit polished-looking for me. Gunnar, on the other hand, is a man you’d want on your side if your society collapsed. Hewn rock with a beard hanging off it. Yes please. (The brick outhouse that is Ralf Möller, otherwise known as the huge German guy in Gladiator, is in this too – playing Ulfar. But I didn’t want to be too greedy, you know?)

Snorri, 1066 (Søren Byder)

Keri: 1066, made for and screened by the UK’s Channel 4, is probably as far as it’s possible to get from Pathfinder whilst simultaneously having anything to do with Vikings. And why? Well, the historical accuracy of 1066 is just a wonder to behold. Although the characters are fictitious, the circumstances enacted here are meticulously researched, and 1066 went as far as hiring actors from the parts of the world where their respective characters hailed – so Snorri here is a bona fide Norseman, Søren Byder, and bloody marvellous he is too. What really comes across in 1066 is a sense of what both the Norwegian and the English armies were fighting for – there’s no demonisation required. Invader, yes, but Snorri is depicted as articulate, loyal and smart (fluent in English, folks) as well as physically strong and brave, with good reasons for deciding to cross the sea. On a far more shallow level, that braid? Hot. Gives me something to hang onto!

Volnard, Severed Ways: the Norse Discovery of America (Fiore Tedesco)

Keri: Oh, my. With the greatest of respect to actor (and also writer, director and producer) Tony Stone, I could look at Fiore Tedesco all day. Severed Ways has had its fair share of detractors, I understand why this is, but I have to say I’m not one of them. This is one bold indie film in my book, and although I was perfectly happy before I’d seen a Viking toilet break in all its glory, I really liked the (other) atmosphere and aesthetics here. And I don’t just mean Volnard, either. Get your minds out of the gutter. When I wasn’t making lewd comments to myself as I sat alone at my laptop, like the sad person I am, I was noticing the beautiful use of natural light (and natural light only), the striking landscapes and the ambient metal soundtrack. Essentially, if you have a place in your cold, kvult hearts for black metal, this is like a scenic postcard crossed with a love letter from that genre of music. That suits me just fine…also, how do you say ‘marry me’ in Old Norse? Just wondering.

Skeld the Superstitious, The 13th Warrior (Richard Bremmer)

Annie: What a badass. Skeld is a fiery redhead, and the twelfth warrior to volunteer to fight alongside Prince Buliwyf (read Beowulf) in the far north. With his heavy duty facial tattoos and icy, unblinking glare, Skeld is not someone you’d be naturally inclined to fuck with. He’s got a nasty temper to back up his intimidating aura, and he not only knows how to use a sword, he knows how to make them too. Skeld is also played by Richard Bremmer, a woefully underrated actor who, once upon a time, played a bad guy named Voldemort in a little movie called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Way more badass than Ralph Fiennes, just saying.

One Eye, Valhalla Rising (Mads Mikkelsen)

Annie: You might be able to catch a Viking, lock him in a cage and make him do your bidding for a while. But he will never be your bitch. And he WILL find a way to escape. And when I say “escape” I mean “kill everyone who wronged him in the most viciously brutal manner possible and then calmly stroll of into the sunset like the most badass mutherfucker in the world.” That’s pretty much what One Eye does. He never speaks, he never smiles, he never stops fighting. He’s also covered in ink and spends a good lot of the movie stripped to the waist and rolling around in the mud with other guys. Score for Norse Porn! His hair is a mess, his face is fucked up and you just know that the inside of his clothes probably smell like old bacon and ass, but he’s played by Mads Mikkelsen, therefore you’d fuck him no matter what. I even know hetero guys who would fuck him, if only to absorb some of his badassery.

Buliwyf, The 13th Warrior (Vladmimir Kulich)

Annie: Blonds aren’t really my type, but there’s no denying that the six foot four inch tall, wide as a wine cask Prince Buliwyf is Awesome Incarnate. He’s a goddamned Viking prince, swathed in animal skins and wielding a sword bigger than a Redwood tree. He’s grim and serious and cold as stone, yet he’s also wise and compassionate, likes dogs and short walks on the beach. He also knows how to stand in the prow of a longship and yell “Odin!” into the fog like a super boss. He even puts up with Antonio Banderas’s whiny shit longer than most people would have. That, my friends, is supernatural. I think even Thor Himself would have smacked the shit out of Tony much earlier on.

So all you little pirate fangirls – you keep your swaggery little pseudo-sailors, your wimpy Caribbean beaches and your goddamned rum. Me and Keri – aka Norse Whores Inc. – will be drinking mead out of a horn, listening to Ulver and playing “hide the hammer” with some barrel chested badasses beneath a mound of animal skins in the mighty pine forests of Scandinavia. Gå og pul deg selv!

 

Warrior Week: Fulci Does Sword & Sorcery in ‘Conquest’

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by Ben Bussey

As I think we’ve established by now, the 80s were a boom period for the sword and sorcery genre; indeed, in a way it’s hard to think of the genre existing before that time. But obviously that’s not the case. Tales of gallant knights or otherwise courageous swordsmen doing battle with hissable villains, often with a touch of that old black magic involved, are as old as the written word; and such tales had invariably made their way onto the screen long before Conan the Barbarian showed up. I think what makes the 80s stand apart from that which came before – and most of what has come since – is that they demonstrated that stories like this aren’t just kids’ stuff. The 80s sword and sorcery films took those epic, fantastical, life-or-death adventures and really emphasised the life-or-death element. The tough guys were really tough, and the bad guys were really bad, and they didn’t shy away from showing what happens when a broadsword strikes a body, or what happens when a rugged hero hooks up with a swooning maiden.

Or, to consider the matter in more practical terms: 80s sword and sorcery crafted a formula for popular films which could be made relatively inexpensively and allowed scope for plenty of perverse and gory goings-on. Someone had to take it to the logical extreme; and when you think of it like that, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Lucio Fulci would try the genre on for size.

For better or worse, Conquest can most definitely be said to stand apart in the body of fantasy cinema, for few, if any films have taken such a prosaic set-up for a sword-swinging adventure and produced something so surreal, excessive and unpleasant. But once again, this is Fulci we’re talking about; surrealism, excess and unpleasantness are part and parcel. While it may be an entry in a genre he had not previously worked in and would not revisit, Fulci’s unmistakable claw marks are all over Conquest; like all his most notable works, it’s an extreme film which will inevitably inspire extreme reactions. For one such as myself who appreciates why Fulci is popular but has never quite been on board, Conquest is an unusual viewing experience, as infuriating as it is delightful; but, perhaps most importantly, it is distinctive.

Again, like most Fulci films the plot is hardly the most important thing and does not bear much scrutiny, but what the hell: there’s a young archer named Ilius (Andrea Occhipinti, also in Fulci’s New York Ripper), who seems to be from some ethereal plane of existence, possibly even the land of the gods. Seeking some kind of coming of age/ journey into manhood experience, he enters a particularly messed-up section of the mortal realm, where the cave-dwelling common folk are at the mercy of the evil sorceress Ohkren (Sabrina Siani, credited here as Sabrina Sellers). Ohkren claims to control the rising and setting of the sun, and as such insists that the land would perish without her. This, it seems, is how she justifies sending her army of werewolves to wreak her sadistic wrath on the commoners as of when she feels like it; this includes a spot of cannibalism. Oh, and did I mention that aside from a solid gold mask, a spangly G-string, a big snake and a layer of baby oil, Ohkren is stark bollock naked at all times?

After a suitably gruesome appetiser (and boy is it gruesome), Ohkren goes off into some sort of drug induced trance and has a vision of a man that might be the cause of her doom; an archer, equipped with a magic bow that fires arrows of pure light. Not being too keen on the idea of being killed by a laser beam arrow, she sends out the wolfmen (well, frankly they look more like shaggy dogs) to find the man in question and snuff him. Fitting the description, our young hero Ilius soon finds himself under attack, outnumbered and up shit creek, until help unexpectedly arrives in the sturdy form of Mace (Jorge Rivero), a lone barbarian sporting what seems to be a Flintstones-ish variation on nunchucks. The seasoned warrior and the young wannabe team up, and obviously a confrontation with the big bad Ohkren is in the cards.

Yes, you could take the bare bones of that premise, downplay the druggy cannibal stuff and slap a dress (or at the very least a bra) on Ohkren, and the resulting film could easily have been prime-time family viewing. But, as well we know, that ain’t how Fulci rolls… so on with the splattering heads, torn limbs and spilled guts. By Fulci standards it’s hardly his nastiest work, but for the genre it’s quite the eye-opener. Likewise the sexualisation of the villainous Ohkren; sure, many other sword and sorcery movies boasted plentiful female nudity (take The Warrior and the Sorceress, in which Maria Sorcas is bare-chested for the duration), but here it feels like every other scene features Ohkren writhing on the ground in narcotic/sexual ecstasy, with her oh-so-symbolic snake slithering all over her very-nearly nude form. Given that her unabashed hedonism goes hand in hand with her villainy, by contrast with the honourable bond that forms between Mace and Ilius, and it’s not hard to read a misogynistic and/or homoerotic subtext into Conquest (female sexuality = evil, male bonding = good). However, it’s even easier to sit back in bemusement and wonder what was going on in the minds of all concerned while they made this oddity, not least at some of the astonishingly feeble special effects; as if the piss-poor werewolf make-up wasn’t enough, just look at what they try to pass off as arrows.

With its weird, soft-focus cinematography and a typically throbbing synth score from Claudio Simonetti, Conquest is custom-made midnight movie material, designed to have that hazy dreamlike quality of the intoxicated or otherwise semi-conscious. It’s probably best viewed in that state; in the cold light of day, it may well wind up looking a wee bit silly. But hey, don’t we all…