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25th anniversary retrospective by Ben Bussey

As is the norm with these kind of things, beware of spoilers…

March 13th 2012, and it’s another silver jubilee. This time, however, I’m really not sure if I can find the words. This time it’s a film so unique, so unmistakable, that as familiar as it is it’s hard to do it justice verbally. Let’s put it this way: there are a tremendous amount of well-loved movies that fit comfortably into a pre-existing format. Less common but even more beloved are those which break new ground and provide a template for others to follow. But every now and then there are the real one-offs; movies that do something so different and unique that, however influential the results may be, no one ever manages to successfully replicate it. Such is the film that celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary today.

Another cinematic rarity is the sequel which can truly be said to surpass its original. ‘Serious’ film buffs will insist only The Godfather Part II has done it (though personally I’ve never detected any great shift in quality between that and its predecessor, both of which, if it needs to be said, are excellent). Genre fans, meanwhile, are more likely to cite The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and Aliens, all of which expanded significantly on the visions of their predecessors to the extent that many casual viewers tend to forget that they are not the first installments of their respective series. When we think of Mad Max, we’re more likely to picture a grizzled, stubbly, mostly silent Mel Gibson racing through the desert pursued by tribes of motorised loonies in S&M gear, as opposed to the more fresh-faced and talkative city streets policeman of the original. Think of Ripley, and we tend to envisage short-haired Sigourney Weaver in the yellow robotic loader suit spitting, “Get away from her you bitch!” rather than the longer-haired, less aggressive incarnation in Ridley Scott’s earlier film.

And so it is with the man we call Ash. Few seem to remember that in the original Evil Dead, there was very little that set Bruce Campbell apart from the rest of the ensemble. He was bowl-haired, wimpish, and physically unremarkable. He may have picked up a chainsaw once, but he didn’t have the heart to use it. And he most definitely never called anyone “baby,” or described his situation as “groovy.” It was only here, in Evil Dead 2, that the Ash of legend – and as such the persona with which Bruce Campbell will always be identified – was truly forged. And it was here that the same essential premise of The Evil Dead was revisited and fine-tuned into something significantly different and – yes, I’m going to say it – well and truly superior to the first film. This, of course, is a good part of why all us geeks have so long been against the idea of The Evil Dead being remade; because it already has been remade, and the results are damn well exemplary.

A long-standing point of contention about the original Evil Dead, which remake actress Jane Levy recently touched on, to the displeasure of some, is whether or not it is actually meant to be funny. To my mind there is no debate: of course The Evil Dead is humorous, and of course that humour is deliberate. You don’t smash a giggling zombie woman in the head with a plank that many times, then have her decapitated corpse dry-hump Bruce Campbell, and expect people to take it seriously. Of course, not everyone got the joke, as is clear from the film’s well-documented problems with the censors, not least in my own dear old homeland of Blighty. As such, I’ve often pondered that Raimi and Co. took a more blatantly comedic approach with Evil Dead 2 in order to underline that they had been taking the piss in the first place. There’s no chance we can mistake this for a serious film. Every single line of the film is in block capitals, bold type, ending with an exclamation mark. Every sound is turned up to eleven, every colour is garish, and rarely if ever does the camera stand still for longer than a second or two.

Once again, the plot can be surmised on a postage stamp – bad shit happens in a cabin in the woods – and the dominant force is the vision of the director. The first five minutes relay the events of the original in a simplified form; Army of Darkness would later do much the same, making The Evil Dead an interesting case of a film trilogy in which prior knowledge of the films is completely unnecessary (indeed, I first saw the films in reverse order, and I suspect I’m not alone in that). In quick succession, Ash and Linda (Denise Bixler and her figure-hugging T-shirt) drive up to the cabin in the obligatory Oldsmobile (Raimi’s first car, which shows up in almost all his movies); Ash plays the tape that recites the incantations, Linda gets possessed, Ash beheads her and buries her in the woods, then the evil force comes rushing through the woods and hits Ash head-on, and we’re back where the original Evil Dead ended. But the difference between the two films should immediately be evident from what happens next: rather than going splat, Ash goes hurtling through the woods, spinning, bashing his head against every nearby branch, not unlike a Looney Toons character with a rocket strapped to its back. From there it’s not long until he’s back in the cabin doing battle with Linda’s severed head, then coming under attack from her headless, chainsaw-wielding torso; and then, most delightfully of all, struggling with his own hand, which is under Deadite control having been infected by Linda’s bite. If you haven’t got the joke by the time Ash cries, “You bastards! You dirty bastards! Give me back my hand!”…well, you probably never will. And I feel sorry for you.

If there is one scene that provides the cornerstone to the Bruce Campbell legend, it has to be Evil Dead 2’s possessed hand sequence. Sam Raimi’s passion for The Three Stooges, having bobbed under the surface in the original, really bursts through here. Before an over-cranked camera, Campbell literally beats himself up, smashing plates over his head, banging his head against kitchen cabinets, pounding himself in the gut, and literally flipping himself head over heels, until a finally comatose Ash is dragged across the floor by the malevolent appendage in the hopes of finishing its owner off with a nearby meat cleaver. Fortunately, our hero awakens just in time to pin his hand to the floor with a knife, then victoriously hack it off at the wrist with his trusty chainsaw. Not unlike the Black Knight of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Ash is too riddled with bravado to feel pain, laughing triumphantly as his face is sprayed with his own blood. It is, I think, this absence of pain on Ash’s part, and his total lack of concern for leaving himself partially dismembered, that makes the scene so hilariously funny even after multiple viewings. (And if you need reminding, or Cthulhu forbid have never actually seen it, check out the scene at the bottom of this page.)

It is important to note, of course, that all we see is the blood spraying on Ash’s face as the chainsaw bites its way through his wrist, much as how a few scenes earlier, when Ash hacked Linda’s head in half, all we saw were silhouettes, and again the resulting gore spraying all over the place. In the first Evil Dead, these moments would have been on-screen, and the camera would almost certainly have lingered on the viscera. This again highlights the different approach the team were taking with Evil Dead 2; not only does this show how anxious they were to avoid any more trouble with the censors, but also how keen they were to put the stress on the comedic this time around. Red blood, while not exactly absent, is more often than not ditched in favour of the kind of multi-coloured slime they used to drench hapless celebrities with on British Saturday morning kids’ shows back in the good old days. Honestly, it wouldn’t have seemed too out of place if after every blow to the head a flock of tweeting birds appeared out of nowhere to circle Ash’s crown. Be it the flying eyeball that lands directly in Kassie Wesley’s screaming mouth, or a fat-suit clad Ted Raimi looking distinctly unlike an actual old woman as Deadite Henrietta, we are almost constantly being reminded not to take what we are seeing seriously, and simply to revel in the absurdity of it all. Alas, shit tends to stick, and Evil Dead 2 soon enough found itself slapped with an X certificate in the US, and trimmed by a few seconds (shots of Bruce Campbell being kicked in the head, bizarrely) to be passed 18 in the UK; absolutely preposterous measures, which go to show just how petty and spiteful the censors can sometimes be.

This is not to say, however, that Evil Dead 2 is a spoof. Certainly it’s cartoonish, but the film’s real masterstroke is how it maintains an atmosphere that is simultaneously scary and funny, with neither effect working to the detriment of the other. Take the moment when Ash’s own reflection leaps out and grabs him, and the subsequent scene in which everything in the cabin comes to life in hysterical laughter, prompting Ash to join in, laughing until he is clearly on the verge of a breakdown (a moment I can’t help thinking must have influenced Nicolas Cage when he did a similar trick in Face/Off). It’s hilarious, yet it’s really quite unsettling at the same time. Scary films and funny films take us into a similar state of heightened emotion, which I suppose is why the two genres so often overlap, but Evil Dead 2 finds nuances within those strange dizzy heights that few if any other subsequent horror-comedies have reached; not even Army of Darkness or Drag Me to Hell. Nope, not even Shaun of the Dead for that matter.

The other thing that sets Evil Dead 2 apart within the canon of 80s horror is that, by contrast with the slashers that ruled the era, the real central attraction of the film is not the villain but the good guy. As unlikely an idea as it always was, one can see the logic in New Line’s desire to bring Ash into the fold for a sequel to Freddy vs. Jason; after all, how many other truly iconic horror heroes came out of the same time period as Messrs. Voorhees and Kruger? With his chainsaw fixed in place on the stump of his right hand, his shotgun strapped to his back, and his blue work shirt torn to shreds, Ash is every inch the monster-bashing badass. This again is somewhere Evil Dead 2 is able to be all things to all people; as much as Campbell’s performance is a deliberate caricature of the stereotypical action hero, he really does embody an action hero ideal at the same time, thanks in no small part to Campbell’s gym-toned physique (reportedly he was working out for two hours before shooting, then two hours after shooting every day), and – it has to be said – his classic, square-jawed good looks. Yes, I said it. We’re all thinking it anyway, male and female alike, orientation be damned… Bruce Campbell looks damn good in Evil Dead 2. Show me the fanboy who insists he doesn’t get at least a little bit gay for Bruce in Evil Dead 2, and I’ll show you a bullshitter. Why else would so many of us get dressed up like him for Halloween? We know sex appeal when we see it. And it’s always said that women find nothing sexier than a sense of humour, so hey – everyone’s a winner.

So, to the legacy of Evil Dead 2… Army of Darkness has more than its share of fanatics, given that it provided many with their access point to the Evil Dead universe, but for me it’s never quite measured up to its predecessors. By taking the action out of the cabin and into a much larger-scale, higher-production value setting, it lacks that DIY charm, and the oddball humour sits awkwardly with the concessions made to a fairly standard studio blockbuster format; it doesn’t help that the horror elements are significantly pared back. Worse still is how Ash’s characterisation changes between the films. Far from the witless but well-meaning would-be tough guy of Evil Dead 2, in Army of Darkness he’s a mean-spirited, arrogant bastard with whom it’s very hard to empathise. Sure, Army of Darkness provides Ash with many of his most celebrated one-liners – the immortal “Gimme some sugar, baby,” and “This is my boom-stick!” amongst others – but none of them quite measure up to that single, immortal word that is evoked for the first time in Evil Dead 2… “Groovy.” Not for nothing does Bruce Campbell use @GroovyBruce as his Twitter handle. Ash is the phantom that will hang over him for as long as he walks this earth, and while he has enjoyed success outside the role – perhaps most notably with Bubba Ho-Tep, Burn Notice, and of course the Old Spice commercials – Campbell seems quite content to bask in that shadow. Quite right too; giving one of the best physical comedy performances of the late twentieth century in one of the most unique American films of the era sure as shit isn’t something to be ashamed of. Yes, in some respects it’s sad that he was never able to break through to the A-list, but Campbell always gives the impression that he’s quite happy where he is. And let’s face it, he’s thrived within that position; the fact that he’s penned an autobiography, plus a novel with himself as the lead, as well as having directed and starred in a movie in which he plays himself (for which, last we heard, a sequel is in the works) goes some way to illustrate the kind of unique status Bruce Campbell holds in pop culture today. And, as he’d be the first to admit, all of that is down to Ash.

As for Sam Raimi – well, we all know how well he did out of it all: next came Darkman, Army of Darkness, The Quick and the Dead, A Simple Plan, and from there it was just a hop, skip and jump to Spider-Man.  And that’s to say nothing of his extensive credits as a producer for both film and television. Yet for the real fans, I daresay no Raimi project in the past two decades was met with more excitement than his long-awaited return to horror with Drag Me to Hell. I raved about it on release, but in all honesty I’ve had very little desire to revisit Drag Me to Hell since. As fun as it is, the main thought that recurs whilst viewing is how close in spirit it is to Evil Dead 2. Which rather begs the question: why not just watch Evil Dead 2? No offence to Alison Lohman, but she’s nowhere near as compelling a lead as Bruce Campbell, and whilst it may raise a smile to see her scrapping with grizzly old Lorna Raver, it only evokes the spectre of Ash and Henrietta’s punch-up.  In short, by trying to repeat the formula of Evil Dead 2 (much as with Army of Darkness), what Raimi inadvertently succeeded in doing was underlining just how much of a one-off Evil Dead 2 really was, in spite of being the second instalment in a three-film series. This being the case, in some respects it’s not too surprising that he has now opted to take The Evil Dead down the remake route in the hands of another director, rather than giving fans the fourth instalment they’ve long clamoured for. I won’t dwell on the subject here; I’m sure we all know where we stand by now…

Well, isn’t it always the way: I started out thinking I’d struggle to find the words to sum up Evil Dead 2, and I’ve wound up writing way more than I thought I would… yet I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. Once again, there are films we celebrate in the full awareness of how derivative and formulaic they are, and then there are films we celebrate because they truly are among the greatest and most inventive contributions to their genre; indeed, in some instances they practically constitute a genre of their very own. Not only am I proud to proclaim Evil Dead 2 one of my favourite films of all time, but I truly feel it is one of the very best horror and/or comedy films ever made. So let’s raise a glass of blood to wish it the grooviest of twenty-fifth birthdays, and trust that it is every bit as fondly remembered in the decades to come.

And to conclude our Evil Dead 2 celebrations, some very groovy artwork from our very own Keri O’Shea!

“We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.”

Those of you who are regular visitors to Brutal as Hell might have noticed there’s an impromptu theme brewing… this may be down to my Piscean cohorts, Annie and Ben, but in any case, it seems we’re going heavy on the deranged marine life and fish/human hybrids. And, hey, if we’re going there, then we need to talk Lovecraft.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, author of some of the most unnerving and disorientating horror literature ever penned, wasn’t himself all that big a fan of the movies, once referring to “the utter and unrelieved hokum of the moving picture.” Hmmm…if he could see the world now, he’d no doubt be unimpressed. Certainly, his work doesn’t lend itself all that comfortably to a straightforward retelling on the screen (although this has been done – and well – more on this anon), but it was inevitable that filmmakers would turn to him for inspiration. HPL’s work has created its own self-perpetuating universe – a dark and horrible place, peopled with the insane, the disfigured and the unknowable – and this place has in its turn fostered remarkable horror movies. And why not?

If there is such a thing as a central message in Lovecraft, it is this: everything we know and recognise is in fact on the precipice of utter chaos and, come to think of it, it turns out that we’re all inconsequential creatures when pitched against these forces. We have no hope of understanding the hows and whys of our situations until it’s far too late. It’s a frightening – and also a thrilling – thought. Personally, I was a latecomer to Lovecraft – I didn’t read any of his stories until I was in my mid-twenties, thus missing out on the formative effects of HPL I’m told of when he’s read by people in their teens – but, fuck, is that not a powerful premise for horror? No wonder people have let their imaginations run riot where Lovecraft is concerned. And of course, if humanity itself is screwed, and everything we know is bullshit, then ditto for any idea of physical integrity. In the Lovecraftian universe, flesh breaks down too. It is our destiny.

In fact, I look a little different lately…are those gills?

Before I backslide down the evolutionary ladder any further, then, let me talk about some of my favourite examples of Lovecraftian horror cinema…there are, of course, many more to choose from, and I’d love to hear about your pick of the bunch too. 

The Beyond (1981)

Whilst it may be one of those movies which takes Lovecraft as a jumping-off point before moving off in its own direction entirely, Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond is a fine imaginative spin on some decidedly Lovecraftian themes. Here, arcane knowledge is (of course) poised to open the gates to Hell itself; the Book of Eibon is an artefact key in all this. Back in the 1920s, a deranged painter named Schweik was lynched by some friendly Louisiana townsfolk for his devilish transgressions – with his death opening the gates of Hell, allowing the dead to cross into our dimension. Years later, a young woman inherits the place of Schweik’s death – The Seven Doors Hotel – and her renovation work opens the portal again. Fulci’s version of the hell which breaks loose is Fulci cinema at its oozing, abhorrent, surreal and strange best, and the interplay between body horror and metaphysical exploration here makes for a remarkable piece of cinema. The fact that this is all refracted through to us through a distinctive Italian Eurohorror vibe definitely works in the film’s favour.

Necronomicon (1994)

This is perhaps not one of the most popular Lovecraft movies out there, and I’ve seen it much maligned, but – I’m very fond of this one, regardless of some of the fair criticism levelled at it. For one thing, any casting decision which places Jeffrey Combs as H.P. Lovecraft himself is onto a winner where I’m concerned, and the film integrates a good actor well-chosen into an interesting framing device, where Lovecraft himself transcribes from the Necronomicon, a book whose malevolent power opens up a portal to somewhere…else. Lovecraft transcribes three stories; thus what we have here is the ‘portmanteau’ format beloved of 60s and 70s horror, giving us three short horror films within one film: ‘The Drowned’ (directed by Brotherhood of the Wolf director Christopher Gans), ‘The Cold’ (directed by kaiju specialist Shusuke Kaneko) and ‘Whispers’ (directed by Brian Yuzna). Of all of these, ‘The Drowned’ is most powerful for me, and does a very good job of capturing that desolation which is as much key to Lovecraft’s prose as the body shock elements. Even if the tone of the rest of the film is too cartoonish for some tastes, you can’t deny that there are some powerful scenes in here, and the directors who were on board bring some interesting things to the table.

Re-Animator (1985)

Here we are, then, with one of the most esteemed and established directors to bring Lovecraft to the screen; Stuart Gordon has consistently gotten a good handle on Lovecraft’s material, and he brings a sort of lunatic energy to proceedings which I’d argue is unparalleled. Re-Animator is one of those projects; though based on a fairly minor HPL tale, the imaginative exploration of ‘Herbert West: Reanimator’ has provided horror viewers with a classic movie and one of the finest body horrors of all time. What holds the film together so well is not just the direction, though: here’s Jeffrey Combs again in arguably his best-known role as Dr. West. In amongst all the chaos and experimentation and syringes full of a certain glowing-green substance, Combs plays his role utterly straight, and Re-Animator works brilliantly because of that. As with many cult cinema performances, the po-faced earnestness of Herbert West carries the film a long way, whereas playing it for laughs would have debased the film’s impact considerably. Also, the physical grotesquerie of this movie? Perfect blend of laugh-out-loud and stomach-turning.

Dagon (2001)

I know that my esteemed colleague and fellow Nordic male-botherer Annie Riordan mentioned Dagon in her rundown of the best mutant fish people movies, so I don’t want to just repeat what she said, but I have to include Dagon on this list. It’s not just one of my favourite Lovecraft movies, it’s one of my favourite movies, and it deserves credit. Sure, it fell foul of some early poor-quality CGI which looks gratingly dated now, but using my favourite HPL story, ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ as a starting-point wins it favour to start with – plus, repositioning the film not in the United States but in Spain allows Stuart Gordon to add yet another layer of difference and alienation to an already heaving atmosphere. Now not only is there a conspiracy in the strange fishing town of Imbocca, but the ‘stranger in a strange land’ effect is amplified by the problems with language and culture difference. Still, this isn’t just a mood piece. There’s lots of tension here too – and protagonist Paul’s efforts to escape from the waves of deformed (or are they deformed?) villagers is a creepy highlight.

Two other things are striking, for me. The first is the magnetic performance of Macarena Gómez, who is just perfect in her role of ‘the Priestess’ and deserves to be seen more outside of her native Spain. Then, there’s the ambiguity of that ending. Has Paul been beaten? Or, in being made to embrace his ‘destiny’, has he actually found happiness? Dagon is a classic example of Lovecraft on the silver screen and it’s a film that I find oddly comforting to watch over and over again.

The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

I come to the end of my little list to discuss what is, to me, the most ambitious and accomplished HPL horror I have seen to date. Sadly, I have yet to see the most recent offering from the HP Lovecraft Historical Society and director Sean Branney (The Whisperer in Darkness) but if it’s of the same quality as The Call of Cthulhu, then fuck it, I’m in.

Imagine if a cinematic version of HPL’s short story of the perils of forbidden knowledge, ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ (featuring the creature which would spawn an entire mythos) had been made at the time he wrote it? The story was completed in 1926: these were the days before ‘talkies’, so it would be a silent film, and if it was anything like comparative creepy tales which were making their way to the screen, it would probably reflect the day’s preoccupation with Expressionist tropes. Also, all the visual effects would have to be done with what was available at the time. See, if you’ve tracked down The Call of Cthulhu (and I was fortunate enough to see this on the big screen) then you need imagine what that would be like no more – the HPLHS have made it happen. The film also closely follows the progression of the original story, making it deeply unusual in terms of HPL cinema, but it works well. The sense of contemporaneity with the story-writer himself is strong, and it makes for a memorable piece of cinema: this film has set the bar very high for any upcoming HPL film projects, as well as given the lie to suggestions that Lovecraft’s stories are unfilmable in their original form… it’s not easy, and it’s not common, but it has been done here.

So, whether or not the man himself was a fan of cinema, his stories have fed into many, many movies over the decades – what he would have thought of the films I’ve listed here, I could not say, but I’m glad that Lovecraft’s warped visions have found its place on the silver screen. For a more exhaustive run-down of the movies I’ve mentioned, as well as stacks more, do check out ‘Lurker in the Lobby: a Guide to the Cinema of H.P. Lovecraft’ by Andrew Migliore & John Strysik.

A 25th Anniversary Retrospective by Ben Bussey

Reader Advisory: Moderate Spoilers ahead…

I’m not sure how well we all remember 1987 – blimey, some of our readership and possibly even some of our staff might not have been born back then – but it was quite a year for horror cinema, seeing the release of a fair few movies that are revered as cult favourites to this day. This being the case, in the coming months you can expect more 25th anniversary retrospectives along the lines of the one you’re about to read (and quite likely some 30th anniversary ones too, as 1982 was no slouch for good horror movies either). But for right now, let us collectively travel back across the fourth dimension to this very day a quarter of a century ago, February 27th 1987, which saw the release of the second sequel to quite possibly the very best American horror film of the decade: A Nightmare On Elm Street.

This third installment had something to prove. While the original had come from nowhere only to capture the imagination of the world, Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge left a bad taste in the mouth of many fans and critics, who felt it deviated too far from the original (not that this hurt its take at the box office). While I do think that Freddy’s Revenge is unfairly maligned overall – it’s deeply flawed for certain, but it looks great and takes the concept in some interesting new directions – I can still appreciate the desire for the series to go closer to the source material for the next one. Bringing back two of the key components of the original in Wes Craven and Heather Langenkamp, plus finding room for a nice cameo from John Saxon, Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors would become the most successful Nightmare sequel, both creatively and (up to that point) commercially. Alas, it would also prove to be a point of no return, setting the series off into an inevitable downward spiral of bad jokes and excessive special effects from which there would be no escape.

In a sense, it’s fairly appropriate that Dream Warriors celebrates its silver jubilee in the same month we at Brutal As Hell have chosen to salute the women in prison genre, as the action here is for the most part confined to the Springwood psychiatric hospital Westin Hills, which while not exactly a maximum security lockdown has a great deal in common with the prison environment. We’ve got a bunch of mismatched personalities declared a danger to the public and to themselves; they’re constantly clashing heads, yet united in their goal to be free. However, in this case the inmates don’t just desire freedom from the institution in which they find themselves incarcerated, but freedom from the evil entity that plagues them in their sleep. Much as Caged Heat is like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest with boobage, Dream Warriors is like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest with trash talk, Dungeons and Dragons, power dressing, cock rock, and special effects galore as we go deeper into Freddy Kruger’s nightmare zone than ever before, and his methods of dispatch become all the more creative.

And as creative kills go, they don’t get much more memorable and effective than the first kill of the movie, which perhaps surprisingly doesn’t occur until about thirty minutes in. Once we’ve opened on Patricia Arquette’s Kristen being sent to Westin Hills after what is assumed to be a suicide attempt, we meet the whole gang: loudmouth tough guy Kincaid (Ken Sagoes), mute Joey (Rodney Eastman, who recently resurfaced in 2010’s I Spit On Your Grave remake), recovering junkie Taryn (Jennifer Rubin, who I understand would later tread similar ground in Bad Dreams), wannabe actress Jennifer (Penelope Sudrow), wheelchair-bound D&D nerd Will (Ira Heiden), and sleepwalking puppeteer Philip (Bradley Gregg, who went on to kick much cyborg teacher ass in Class of 1999). Significantly, Philip is established straight away as the strongest of the bunch; where the others mouth off ineffectually, he is articulate and confident, displaying real leader potential. So who does Freddy go after first…? Yep, he takes out the alpha male, slashing open his arms and legs and using his tendons as marionette strings, walking him to the highest point in the building, then cutting the strings away, sending him plummeting to his death. Not only is it one of the most iconic sequences of the Nightmare series, but it’s also a powerful statement of intent for the movie, as a character who seemed to have surefire survivor status is splattered before any of the others. From then on, it’s open season on adolescent insomniacs, and not long thereafter comes another of Freddy’s most iconic kills, with Jennifer getting her big break in TV…

As should be immediately evident, Freddy’s changed his game plan somewhat since last we saw him, and all things considered it’s probably his most logical approach yet. There are no inexplicable deaths like that of Johnny Depp’s Glen in the original, nor the possession tactics and illogical real world appearances that soured Freddy’s Revenge for so many. This time around, it would seem Freddy has considered that it might be best not to arouse the suspicions of the adults by doing anything that contravenes all laws of science and reason. So it is that he focuses on a core bunch of kids and makes them appear suicidal: slashing Kristen’s wrists, dropping Philip off a balcony, smashing Jennifer’s head into the television. (Well, okay, I must confess I’ve never heard of anyone killing themselves that way, and I’m not sure how it’s physically possible, but what the hell.) Henceforth, the grown-ups all think the kids are crazy, and the kids themselves may be forced to contemplate whether they are indeed crazy; their willpower is low, their anxiety is high, and for Freddy there’s nothing more appetising than a terrified, demoralised adolescent. However, we soon find that this time Freddy may have bitten off more than he can chew. It turns out Kristen has the ability to bring other people into her own dreams, and within this literal collective unconscious the teens each find their own unique dream powers which they can use to combat Kruger on his own turf. This they set about doing with the expert guidance of their newest therapist: Nancy (Langenkamp), the only one to confront Freddy and survive, who is now a grad school twentysomething with hair and shoulder pads that are sizeable enough to make you think she just stepped off the set of Dynasty.

It seems that this emphasis on the kids fighting back, and of course the return of Nancy, were the key elements Wes Craven brought to the film. In this article at the official Nightmare on Elm Street Films site, Craven professes to have resented being more-or-less forced to end the original Nightmare not with Nancy defeating Freddy as he had intended, but with Freddy clearly emerging unscathed and victorious, New Line having smelt the franchise possibilities from the get-go. Such an ending, Craven complains, suggests that “villains will win out and the most brutally powerful survive. In my work I’m continually fighting that.” As such it’s unsurprising that, when asked to write Part 3, he came up with a concept which, while still scary, is inherently far more optimistic than that which came before, showing a group of young misfits put aside their differences and work together to defeat their common enemy. However, whilst Craven’s name may be splashed all over the credits, listing him as a writer and executive producer, his involvement was apparently not as extensive as we might think: within that same article, producer Sara Risher states that the original script by Craven and Bruce Wagner was “seventy per cent” rewritten by director Chuck Russell and (in his first feature as a screenwriter) Frank Darabont, and Craven insists that beyond that first draft he was not creatively involved in the film at all.

This being the case, the temptation is clearly there to attribute some of the cheesier elements of Dream Warriors to Russell and Darabont (and/or pressures from on high to produce something more commercial than the first two films). For all its strengths, Dream Warriors certainly is high on cheese content. Take the introduction of the dream powers: what with Will declaring himself “the Wizard Master” and Kristen becoming an expert acrobat, they’re only a few fantasy archetypes away from mirroring the cast of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon show. And that’s before the truly wince-inducing reveal of the “beautiful and BAD!” Taryn, with leathers, switchblades and two-foot mohawk; or Kincaid saying, “let’s go kick that motherfucker’s ass all over dreamland,” to which Will goes, “Alright!” Please, all this cringing is making my face ache…

Even so, this corniness is part of what makes Dream Warriors plainly and simply the most entertaining entry in the Nightmare franchise. It’s got all those key elements that are so pivotal to 80s horror, and made the movies of that era so much fun. There’s that same neon-lit colour scheme that dominated the era, with Freddy’s boiler room glowing red like a nightclub in Miami Vice; there’s Angelo Badalamenti’s synth-driven score, punctuated with the air-punching anthems of Dokken. Then there’s the ridiculous special effects, most of which are of course practical – take the giant snake version of Freddy which tries to swallow Kristen early on, and the faces of the screaming children on Freddy’s chest – but with room found for a bit of good ol’fashioned Harryhausen-esque stop-motion (happily still in fairly common use in mid-budget genre fare back then) as John Saxon and Craig Wasson do battle with Freddy’s skeleton. Of course, Dream Warriors also boasts one of the series’ few instances of crowd-pleasing gratuitous nudity, with Stacey Alden acting out many a young (and old) man’s fantasy as the foxy nurse eager to tend to her patient’s every need. But even in this instance, there’s some of that trademark Nightmare on Elm Street headfuckery going on, as the nurse reveals herself to in fact be Freddy in one of his more devious disguises. Imagine the alarm of so many millions of fanboys, having un-paused the videotape and wiped themselves off on the nearest convienient tissue and/or their jeans, only to discover they had effectively just tugged one out to Robert Englund. Therapy, here we come.

Feeling for the most part more like a fantasy adventure movie than a horror, there can be no doubt that Dream Warriors changed the course of the Nightmare On Elm Street movies for good, providing a template which most of the subsequent sequels would follow. Alas, this would also prove to be the downfall of the series. The emphasis was now squarely on Freddy cracking wise, and coming up with ever more outlandish ways to off the brats. Giving us characters we could actually give a shit about was no longer of any concern; from here on in the teens were truly nothing more than victims in waiting, and the sadistic murdering paedophile Freddy had somehow wound up the hero. Englund still manages to keep Freddy fairly sinister here, but he’s clearly an actor who enjoys hamming it up, and in the films that followed neither he nor his directors would go to much trouble reining in that madcap energy. And why would they? It’s easy to forget now, and it may surprise those who weren’t around at the time, but by the late 80s Freddy was an internationally recognised brand; not a cult figure as today, but well and truly mainstream. He was on TV shows, he was rapping with the Fat Boys, and his visage showed up on truckloads of diverse memorabilia, including those notorious talking dolls. It was Dream Warriors that started Freddy off down that path from a truly terrifying villain to a playful Puck figure no more threatening than Wile E. Coyote. What began here with his claws turning into syringes would inevitably lead to his gauntlet turning into a fucking Nintendo Powerglove in Freddy’s Dead. (Facepalm.)

But even if we keep our attention squarely on the films themselves, it’s not a prettier picture. I’d class 1988’s Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master in the bottom three of the series (only Freddy’s Dead and the remake are worse, to my money), and I think a key reason why I’ve always hated it is how callously it does away with the surviving Dream Warriors in the early scenes (replacing Patricia Arquette with the colourfully named but rather dull Tuesday Knight doesn’t help), only to introduce in their stead an utterly detestable teen ensemble who you can’t wait to see die horrible deaths. Here’s the thing: no matter what anyone says, the characters in horror films – yes, even those of the lowly slasher genre – should never be there simply to be slaughtered. No, we don’t have to like them necessarily, but we must be able to relate to them, sympathise with their dilemnas, recognise elements of ourselves within them. If they are nothing more than two-dimensional nitwits – which is most definitely the case with most of the kids in Dream Master, Dream Child, Freddy’s Dead, Freddy Vs Jason and that festering turd of a remake – then how can we possibly get invested in the story? If we don’t care who lives or dies then how can we care about the film? That’s why Dream Warriors stands head and shoulders above all those sequels, and why it is easily the second-best film in the series; because the Dream Warriors are on the whole a relatable, sympathetic bunch who we don’t want to see die. When we follow them on their journey, we’re on their side, not Freddy’s; we’re eager to see them give as good as they get, and that’s the way it should be.

As dear as the original Nightmare on Elm Street is to me, I find myself watching Dream Warriors a great deal more in recent years. It’s one of the great feel-good, popcorn horror movies that’s custom made for repeat viewing, and such things are to be prized these days when the bulk of new movies (horror and otherwise) are designed to last no longer than a profitable opening weekend. Less than two years on, I have no desire whatsoever to revisit the lamentable reboot, but twenty-five years on the love for Dream Warriors is as great as it ever was. If you share that sentiment, then I invite you all to stand, open your books to page 666, and join me in singing that wonderful hymn we all know and love by our sainted brothers Dokken…

by Keri O’Shea 

At this time of year, you invariably hear a great deal about keeping the ‘true meaning’ of Christmas: it’s too schmaltzy, it’s too commercial, it isn’t what it was… well, it certainly isn’t what it was, but the idea that Christmas has always been a peaceable Christian festival is just plain incorrect. In fact, down through the years, Christmas has encompassed practices which are anywhere from unsettling to scary – as Andy McQuade pointed out in his great article about the BBC’s Ghost Story for Christmas phenomenon, at the darkest time of the year, a time which would have frozen or starved our ancestors to death, there was a lot to be scared about, and this informed how people celebrated the festival. When everything was turned on its head – the days short, the nights long – people wanted distraction, but the ever-present fear borne of the uncertainty of the season often saw this distraction take bizarre, scary form. For all the traditions of good cheer and plenty, there were reminders of the precariousness of the season to go along with them. Here are just a few of those from the British tradition, although I’m sure other countries have their fair share…

Mari Lwyd

I’m proud that one of the most bizarre Christmas practices stems from the area of Wales where I grew up. Imagine, if you will, there’s a knock at the door on Christmas Eve. Probably carol singers, right? Wrong. What you see when you open the door is… a horse’s skull, towering above you, its eyes lit by candles, and a cowl thrown over its head. Accompanying the skeletal horse is a band of men, their faces blackened. They want to come in…

Believe it or not, this is the Mari Lwyd (‘grey mare’) tradition, which still takes place in parts of Wales at this time of year. No one is exactly sure why the Welsh took to affixing horse skulls (or, sometimes, wooden replicas) atop poles and carrying them door to door, although there is some suggestion that it’s a hangover from a pagan rite. Wherever it stems from, the usual procedure is that the mari and her followers go door to door throughout the night, singing songs and versifying. They challenge householders to try to best them in song or verse, and ask for a tribute in the form of food or ale before they leave. Before any of this, though, the mari lwyd causes absolute mayhem, often dashing around and trying to bite people once it is allowed indoors (and it nearly always is – I mean, would you argue with a seven foot disembodied horse skull?) If there’s a replica skull being used rather than a real one, then nails will have been hammered into its jaws to act as teeth. Just so people don’t miss out.

Dumb Cake

How about this for a creepy superstition? In parts of England, a girl would fast on Christmas Eve, but bake a ‘dumb cake’, onto which she would prick her initials. The cake would be left near the fireplace overnight, and the door to the room had to be left open. It had to be left open, because what was about to happen was this: her future husband’s doppelganger was going to climb in through a window, and add his initials to the dumb cake. He would then escape through the open door: shutting the door meant trapping the double, and the results would be dire…

Evergreens

One of the few Christmas traditions which have been a constant since pre-Christian times, evergreens like holly, ivy and mistletoe are still used today to decorate homes. Thankfully we don’t always do with them what our ancestors did, though. Mistletoe, which has had sacred significance since the days of the Druids, was often hung over cribs to ward off faery folk who – for reasons best known to themselves – always seem to want to steal human offspring. It was also worn around the neck in parts of Staffordshire to repel witches. Perhaps it is best known, though, for being hung in a doorway, underneath which couples kiss for good luck: this may be an echo of its former sexual significance to our pagan forebears. Holly, another charm for warding off wickedness, was sometimes used as a cure for chilblains: this was rather unkindly done by thrashing the affected area with the leaves. If that isn’t a gruelling enough treatment for you, then consider its use as a cure for worms: an old English recipe recommended the sufferer to yawn over a bowl containing sage and holly leaves, at which point the worms would drop out of his or her mouth. Ivy was also fearsome to witches, but amongst its other uses it served as a divinatory tool: a leaf was floated in a dish of water and left there until Twelfth Night, at which time its condition would tell you what sort of year lay ahead. Black spots foretold illness, and general decay in the leaf meant you were probably going to die during the coming year.

Of course, the evergreens had to be disposed of in a correct, timely fashion. The vicar of a church in Devon wrote of what could occur if this wasn’t done properly:

Down with the rosemary and so,
Down with the baies and mistletoe,
Down with the holly, ivie, all,
Wherewith ye drest the Christmas hall.
That so the superstitious find
Not one least branch there left behind,
For look, how many leaves there be,
Neglected there, maids trust to me
So many goblins you shall see.

Lords of Misrule and Mumming

If you start partying at Halloween and keep it going until Christmas, then you are in good company. An old custom – with roots very firmly in the Roman festival of Saturnalia, where slaves and masters swapped roles – is the Lord of Misrule phenomenon, which started in the late medieval period. Someone would be voted as the Lord at Halloween; he would then be master of ceremonies until the New Year, and this invariably involved generating as much anarchy and chaos as possible: games and plays would be organised, costumes would be worn, all at the behest of the Lord – much to the exasperation of the local clergy. To be fair, it did often get quite messy, and participants thought nothing of marching into church to disrupt the services, often dressed in drag and completely drunk. The next time someone tells you we should do Christmas like it used to be, then you can do the above and no one can contradict you. Tradition: it’s a fine thing indeed. Also in the vein of performances, the ‘mumming plays’ were and remain in practice throughout Britain during the Christmas period. Although the plays vary from area to area, they all contain a certain amount of the grotesque: St. George and good old Beelzebub are stock characters who regularly appear, and when St. George is killed in battle he is revived, mad-scientist style, by the machinations of ‘The Doctor’ who also regularly appears. Oh, but in Llangynwyd in Wales, the chief mummer routinely wore – you’ve guessed it – a horse’s skull!

These are just a few examples of a wide range of oddball traditions which have been historically practiced in the British Isles; one thing’s for sure, though, there is no one ‘true meaning’ of Christmas. It changes, as people change. If anything, we’re unusual these days, in our centrally-heated, well-lit homes, for not seeing this time of year as distinctly ambiguous, as worrisome as it is welcome. But, hey, we’ve always got Brutal as Hell to remind us that there still just might be something sinister out there this festive season…

by Ben Bussey

He was the first great horror director of the talkies era. Responsible for four of the very best 1930s Universal classics,  horror cinema would be a very different place without James Whale. While he will of course always be most remembered for the Frankenstein films, he did a lot more than simply slap a monster in front of a camera as so many have done since. He crafted dark tales awash with compelling Gothic imagery, and gleeful undertones of subversive humour, identifying with the outsider whilst approaching society at large with suspicion and contempt, cementing the status of horror as the non-conformist’s genre of choice.

I realise that may seem a grandiose sweeping statement. It might also be deemed undue praise, given Whale is known to have taken the mantle of horror director with more than a little reluctance. He fancied himself at the helm of more upmarket films, and to a large extent his macabre efforts were to him little more than a quid pro quo for such later work as the musical Show Boat, and his highly personal World War I drama The Road Back (infamously re-cut by Universal, his anger at which most likely played a big part in his decision to take early retirement from filmmaking). Still, it seems fair to suggest that this hint of resentment at having to work in a genre he cared little for actually helped the films themselves; that it fed the sardonic tone, sly wit and flashes of antisocial rage that became his signature.

Of course, given that Frankenstein is our reason for commemorating him now, we should admit straight away that Whale’s signature humour is all but absent in his horror debut. While the film carries many of his hallmarks – Gothic production design with echoes of German Expressionism, impassioned performances from Boris Karloff, Colin Clive and Dwight Frye – there is also a great deal about it that reeks of compromise. Edward Van Sloan had already played the elder provider of exposition as the original Van Helsing and not long thereafter repeated the role in The Mummy, so to say that his performance as Dr Waldman now feels a bit by-the-numbers is putting it mildly. The film’s 19th Century European ambience is also soured somewhat by the presence of two unequivocally 1930s Americans, and bland ones at that: Mae Clarke as Henry’s betrothed, Elizabeth, and John Boles as Victor, the best friend/potential love rival/absolute fifth wheel of character that serves almost no purpose. Then there are the painfully unfunny comic relief scenes with Frederick Kerr as Frankenstein’s dithering father and Lionel Belmore as the bungling Burgomaster. Finally, there’s the feeble attempt at a happy ending, shot at Universal’s insistence. All these elements feel forced and stale, and are notable by their absence in the films that followed. After all, the massive success of Frankenstein meant that Whale was given considerably more elbow room to do his own thing next time around, and if he was more or less obliged to make horror then he was going to make damn sure he did it his way.

The Old Dark House (1932)

Naturally, Universal were eager for a Frankenstein sequel straight away, but Whale wasn’t going to give in that easily. His next horror work would be a very different story indeed. Adapted from a JG Ballard novel, The Old Dark House takes what is now the fairly standard Gothic set-up of the travellers marooned by car trouble during a storm, left with no option than to seek shelter at the less-than inviting abode of the title. (Oi, you at the back, stop singing “There’s a Light Over at the Frankenstein Place…”) Once inside, it inevitably transpires that the residents are not the most down to earth individuals, and a tense evening ensues with personality clashes aplenty, escalating to violence before the night is through.

While it is without question the least iconic and least widely seen of Whale’s work, The Old Dark House is the film in which Whale’s signature humour and love of colourful characters really comes to the forefront. In the place of Frankenstein’s nondescript supporting cast, here we have an archly theatrical ensemble. Again the nominal star, Karloff here plays a menacing butler, once again mute and shrouded in mystery, but the spotlight is hogged somewhat by Ernest Thesiger and Eva Moore as the bickering siblings who own the house. Moore is arguably the more attention-grabbing of the two here (though Thesiger would of course get his time to shine later), with her half-deaf roaring and her pious Bible-bashing. Witness the subtle nightmarish effect when, as she breaks into a particularly venomous Biblical rant, her face is shown in a series of distorted reflections; and all at once, a character who had initially seemed laughable suddenly becomes very sinister indeed. As we’ve seen many times since, the line between the horrific and the humorous is often very thin, and The Old Dark House is arguably one of the first films to really explore this.

When comparing the film to Frankenstein, perhaps the aspect of The Old Dark House which stands out the most is the quintessential Englishness of it all. With the exception of the American Gloria Stuart (who would later pop up as the love interest in The Invisible Man, and much later as Kate Winslet’s 1997 counterpart in Titanic), the cast is pretty much entirely English, and for once they’re not the unthreatening upper class twits Hollywood had so often portrayed before and has since, with Frederick Kerr’s Baron Frankenstein being a prime example. On top of the aforementioned Moore and Thesiger, we have a couple of loud-mouthed Northerners in Charles Laughton as the archetypal self-made man, and Lilian Bond as his trophy girlfriend. To this day it’s rare that actors from Northern England get all the way to Hollywood with their accents intact – just ask Sean Bean – so it’s a most refreshing change to have such a different facet of the English identity in an American-made film, particularly for a Northerner like myself.

The Invisible Man (1933)

This is an interesting one to consider in relation to Frankenstein. Whilst The Old Dark House seems wilfully deliberate in straying as far from the Frankenstein format as possible whilst remaining a horror, The Invisible Man is by contrast very close to Frankenstein in a great many respects. The central character is a scientist on the brink of a monumental breakthrough, anxious to be left alone to continue his work, teetering on the edge of madness. Equally anxious to intervene are his former mentor, his estranged fiancee, and his best friend who, unbeknowst to the scientist, also has feelings for the fiancee. Once the scientist’s work becomes known to the public, mass panic ensues, resulting in the subject of the experiment being systematically hunted down.

In this much, the narratives of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man are borderline identical. But where Henry Frankenstein created a monster, Jack Griffin made a monster of himself; where Frankenstein saw the error of his ways, Griffin remained unrepentant (a half-hearted deathbed lament aside); and where Frankenstein’s monster unwittingly created panic, Griffin revels in it, terrorising those he holds in contempt with outright glee. There is very little here of redemption or the inherent decency of people. This is a bleak, cynical, and in its own way quite sadistic tale in which pretty much everyone is out to serve their own interests, and the world en masse is not looked upon fondly.

I don’t want to paint The Invisible Man as nothing but misery, however. Quite the contrary, it’s probably the funniest of Whale’s horrors, often truly laugh out loud hilarious to this day, thanks largely to the supporting cast of small town English oddbods, most notably the wonderful Una O’Connor who would return in Whale’s next (and last) horror. And of course, the central performance from Claude Rains (like Karloff, another struggling British actor whom Whale launched into superstardom) is so wonderfully over the top, every line roared with theatrical relish. We can also scarcely forget that the film was an absolute tour de force of special effects for the time, and it’s wonderful to see that – unlike so many of today’s FX-oriented blockbusters – the technical aspects did not swamp the film, but rather served the overall vision, working perfectly in harmony with Whale’s world view. Really, I can’t think of a moment that approximates James Whale’s directorial identity better than the woman running screaming in terror, chased by a skipping pair of trousers as Claude Rains sings “Here We Go Gathering Nuts in May.” Horror, spectacle, and dark hilarity all at once; that pretty much wraps Whale up, I think.

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Superlatives at the ready; here is the one film that all discussions of James Whale come back to, and indeed most discussions of the Universal horror film. (It’s not too surprising, then, that Marc chose to write about it for our Frankenstein 80th Anniversary celebrations, as you can read here.) Having long resisted studio pressure for a sequel to his breakthrough hit, Whale finally relented on the condition that he be allowed total creative control. The result, as I’m certainly not the first and won’t be the last to remark, is the greatest of all the Universal monster movies, and one of the very best films ever made in the genre. In his horror films since Frankenstein, Whale had revisited the general format whilst filtering out that which had been unsatisfactory; we might see The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man as dry runs for this, his crowning achievement in horror.

Just about everything that worked about the original is back in force: Karloff’s towering central performance, Pierce’s unforgettable make-up, the gloriously creepy set design. Even Dwight Frye returns, despite having died in the original and subsequently he has to portray a whole new impish homicidal maniac in this one. Meanwhile, everything about the original that required improvement is indeed improved upon. The camerawork and editing are considerably more fluid, and the music is far more prominent and distinctive. The acting is also of a uniformly higher standard (with the possible exception of Colin Clive, who gives a more restrained and subsequently rather less interesting performance here). Replacing Mae Clarke, Valerie Hobson makes for a much more convincing and compelling Elizabeth – astonishingly she was only 17 at the time – whilst John Boles’ Victor and Frederick Kerr’s Baron are simply omitted with no explanation (though, in fairness, Kerr had died in 1933). With Edward Van Sloan’s Dr Waldman having been offed by the monster last time around, this time an elder mentor for Colin Clive’s Henry comes in the infinitely more entertaining form of Ernest Thesiger’s Dr Pretorius. Where Waldman had done nothing but try to dissuade Henry from his work, Pretorius anxiously persuades Henry to take his work further; and this, after all, is what the audience wants to see. A close friend of Thesiger, Whale custom designed the role for him, and what a tremendous role it is. In his unabashed ambition and disdain for convention Pretorius is in many respects similar to Claude Rains’ Griffin, but with a glorious delight in his devilishness that is all Thesiger.  

Whilst Frankenstein and Pretorius collaborate on a female monster, the original Monster himself is finding his humanity, or lack thereof. The first film touched only briefly on how the outside world reacts to the Monster; this becomes one of the core themes of the sequel, as he meets fear and persecution wherever he goes, save the home of the blind man which, for a time, grants him shelter and friendship. The scenes with O.P. Heggie’s hermit have been so widely spoofed since (perhaps most notably and brilliantly in Young Frankenstein, as Marc remarks) that it can be tricky now to take them entirely seriously, but they’re still wonderful moments. The brief taste of humanity and happiness that the Monster experiences here surely only further feeds his rage at the harsh treatment he receives so soon thereafter; and his ultimate despair when even the Bride, created specifically to keep him from being alone in the world, also rejects him.

I’ve tried to avoid getting too psychoanalytical about Whale himself when discussing his films, but given that The Bride of Frankenstein concludes with the Monster destroying himself, the Bride and Pretorius – the film’s three outsiders, whom the Monster declares “belong dead” – it’s hard not to relate this to Whale, who would of course take his own life twenty-two years later. The reasons for which Whale might identify with such outsider characters are well documented: he was a war veteran and former POW; he was of working class origin, which he would be forced to conceal when working in the typically upper-middle class territory of the theatre; and, most famously, he was openly homosexual in a time of even greater intolerance than the present day. Whether or not we choose to read this as informing his work is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. Considerably less open to debate is the impact of his work. Once again, he may not have cared too deeply about horror himself, but his work within it played a major role in shaping the genre into what it is today, even if it was by accident rather than design.