Archive: Author: Admin

Frankenstein 80th Anniversary: 5 Other Frankenstein Movies

Posted on by Admin

Continuing our celebration of Frankenstein’s 80th Anniversary, Keri O’Shea looks at some of the weird and wonderful Frankenstein films that have come in its wake… 

The influence of the Universal Frankenstein movies cannot be underestimated. Boris Karloff’s ‘dear old monster’ has become a horror archetype, crossing the breach into popular culture and staying there, for the best part of a century so far. Children, who probably have no concept of the original film and haven’t sat through an old black and white picture in their lives, recognise the monster; they can describe him, they wear his mask at Halloween and they rank him alongside the ghosts, witches and vampires which make up the ranks of legendary creepy figures. That all of this is due to what is now a very old movie is nothing short of incredible. Don’t forget, there’s very little about the creature’s appearance in Mary Shelley’s novel: what we recognise as the creature is all down to Universal Pictures and the vision of James Whale and his team, especially Jack Pierce who designed the creature’s make-up. With such a phenomenal hit as this, it’s unsurprising that horror cinema has been influenced by it ever since and it’s fitting, considering the story, that the 1931 movie has spawned its own hideous progeny down through the years. Here is a pick of that progeny – some serious, some decidedly silly…

1) The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. Well, when legendary British studio Hammer decided that they wanted to produce their own version of the Frankenstein story, the end results weren’t simply designed to be original, but also original enough that they would avoid getting sued by Universal in the process – and Universal were very much on their case as The Curse of Frankenstein was brought to life, resulting in the deliberately-different make-up effects used on Lee. The first movie of several Frankenstein horrors which Hammer released, Curse of Frankenstein starred the eponymous Christopher Lee as the monster and Peter Cushing as one of the several incarnations of Victor Frankenstein he would go on to play. Frankenstein begins the film languishing in jail for his crimes against humanity; he confesses to a priest about what brought him to be there, and the rest of the film follows his story, his scientific experiments with cadavers and the subsequent creation of his creature, whom he actually uses as a stooge, encouraging it to commit crimes in his name. The moral debasement of Frankenstein is key to this movie, as is the lurid full colour in which it was shot. If Universal’s Frankenstein was considered scary in its day, then Hammer’s first, technicolour foray into the unhallowed arts was enough to send the BBFC into conniptions and the film was released with a X certificate.

Hammer’s first colour production was a sizeable hit. Not only that, but its success heralded the birth of the studio’s renowned Gothic horror cycle, and cemented the strong working relationship between Cushing and Lee. It was therefore an important film in many respects.

 

2) Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965)

Without pushing the significance too far, it can be observed that some Japanese ‘B’ movies from this era, even at their clumsiest, carry at their hearts some significant hang-ups from the events which ended the Second World War; Gojira is a well-known example of this. In Frankenstein Conquers the World, we get a mash-up of the Frankenstein story, the kaiju genre, and the legacy of Japan’s post-nuclear attack state; to declare the film a significant allegory would be pushing it somewhat, but nonetheless, the subtext of Hiroshima and radiation sickness feeds into the film’s plot. In the film, the immortal heart of the Frankenstein monster is being passed to the Japanese by their allies, the Nazis; they take it to Hiroshima to experiment on it, just in time to get it destroyed in the atomic blast which follows. This isn’t the end of the story, though. The legacy of the Frankenstein heart, plus the effects of radiation, gives rise to a strange, radiation-resistant little boy who has been living rough on the streets before the medical team who had been due to work on the heart take him in, and under their care he grows and grows to monstrous proportions, takes off on a rampage, and – wouldn’t you know it – actually ends up in combat with a completely different giant inhuman creature.

It’s mixed up and it’s clumsy, but it is interesting to see what an Asian film studio made of the source material and how they made it fit with the far East’s own burgeoning cult film tradition.

 

3) Blackenstein (1973)

Ah, blaxploitation. What a strange beast you were. Black Frankenstein made its way to screens due to the success of the preceding year’s Blacula – a stupid title, for what is in actual fact a much smarter film than expected with good performances, especially from star William Marshall. So, if Dracula can work as Blacula, then the same thing must be true of Frankenstein, right? Well, Blackenstein (a.k.a. Black Frankenstein) plain wasn’t as good a film – in fact, it’s noteworthily awful – but in the same way that even a madball flick like Frankenstein Conquers the World can reflect something interesting about the times it sprang from – even if it quickly departs from that point into lunacy – Black Frankenstein takes for its premise the idea that a man crippled during the Vietnam War can be rejuvenated by a mad scientist, name of Dr. Stein. As you might expect, Stein is not the sort of man who gives a damn about ethics committees, and even worse than that the flawed ‘DNA solution’ injected by his assistant into landmine victim Eddie renders him a part-time mindless killer. Imagine! It’s all highly silly, but very much in the ‘so bad it’s good’ camp for me, and very much of its time and style. If Blacula is a pleasant surprise, then Blackenstein…isn’t, but it’s certainly not without entertainment value. Where the hell else are you going to see a version of the creature sporting an Afro?

4) Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)

I must declare my bias here: Andy Warhol’s spin on the Frankenstein story is one of my all-time favourite films and I would very much like Udo Kier to come and live in my house as some sort of wonderfully-cheekboned houseboy. There, I’ve said it. Flesh for Frankenstein was one of two productions with the same director (Paul Morrissey) and some of the same cast, with Kier and Joe Dallesandro taking lead roles in each. The second of the films dealt in its own inimitable way with the Dracula myth, and the first of these – you’ve guessed it – cast Kier as Baron Frankenstein, here a Serbian landowner obsessed with regenerating Serbia’s greatness by piecing together his own master-race of ‘zombies’. He already has a desirable female creature, and he wants to create the perfect male so that they can mate. The thing is, in a great sequence of mistaken identity, the man he thinks has frightened the whores out of a local brothel with his sheer manliness is actually a gentle soul who is a) only there because his friend Nicholas (Dallesandro) insisted on it and b) really, really, not a ladies’ man. Heh, imagine what would happen if that brain got put into the creature? And if Nicholas got given a job at Castle Frankenstein where, during a rare moment when he isn’t tupping the Baroness, spots his erstwhile friend in his reduced condition?

This is Euro horror at its best – lurid, camp, sleazy, and outrageous, where a class-based subtext of workers rising up against their effete masters sits alongside lots of sickly sexuality and some pretty grisly ideas too. Udo Kier getting off on having sex with the female creature through a hole in her abdominal wall must rank pretty highly up there on the Beaufort Scale of Wrongness; who needed to wait until 2010 for a film set in Serbia where a man finds himself performing aberrant sexual acts, eh? We can all learn a lot from the Baron’s questioning scientific mind and vision. After all, and as tells his equally-deranged assistant, ‘To know life, Otto, you must fuck death – in ze gall bladder!’

5) Frankenhooker (1990)

If Flesh for Frankenstein was beginning to take the Frankenstein source material over into rather, shall we say droll territory, then the process was completed by the patron saint of body-horror-comedy, Mr. Frank Henenlotter, when he directed Frankenhooker in 1990. I mean, we basically start off with a woman being killed by a lawnmower; if you have any pretensions to a serious plot, then you’ve waved goodbye to it at this stage, I’d argue. When his girlfriend suffers this fate, ‘scientist’ (or more accurately, electrician) Jeffrey Franken (geddit?), who was able to save her head, decides to put her back together again. Using body parts. Using the body parts of prostitutes. Who have exploded. Who have exploded after smoking some sort of contaminated crack cocaine. The resultant creature isn’t the fiancée he knew and loved, however, and acts…well, quite a lot like a crack whore hive mind. The vision of the reconstructed Elizabeth – played brilliantly by Patty Mullen – lurching down the street asking people if they’re ‘looking for some action’ is a great schlock horror moment, and a literal schlock science moment, too.

Frankenhooker is fun because it shows just how different a film can be in tone from the Universal Frankensteins whilst still referencing a lot of the same source material. It may be as mad as mad can be, but it definitely owes something to the 1931 movie and it’s not without an awareness of the original story, either. Sure, Mary Shelley never saw a strapping prostitute in her vision, but Henenlotter knows his stuff, from the names he gives to his characters to elements of the plot, like gathering the most attractive limbs for the project at hand (which, to be fair, Mary Shelley does mention). Of course, nearly everything here is tongue-in-cheek, but you can’t fault Herr Henenlotter for sheer imagination, and Frankenhooker is a good representation of the sheer variety of Frankenmovies we have. Apart from anything else, here’s betting that the Frankenhooker would have been a more willing mate for Karloff’s Monster than the gal he ended up with!

 

Festival Report: Abertoir 2011

Posted on by Admin

Keri O’Shea on Abertoir Horror Film Festival 2011, Aberystwyth, Wales UK

Well, that’s it for another year: Abertoir has been and gone, there’s nothing left on my horror calendar and I’ve once more been spat out, kicking and screaming, into Real Life. Still, perhaps it’s all for the best. At the time of writing, I am struggling to get used to daylight again, suffering from rickets, scurvy and various other complications brought about by subsisting on meagre portions of food eaten in the dark, and I owe a huge apology to my liver. As Abertoir now stands at a huge six days (making it the UK’s longest horror fest) my endurance had probably just about reached its limits. Heh, those people in Xavier Gens’ new ‘confined space’ horror The Divide (which featured at the festival) had it easy, when you think about it…

We wouldn’t have it any other way though. Here are some of the festival highlights.

The Film Censorship Debate

I was surprised – and delighted – and surprised again that Abertoir welcomed esteemed censorship expert Professor Martin Barker to the stage as a special guest for a debate on the current state of play between the British Board of Film Classification and modern cinema…I say ‘surprised’ twice because Mr. Barker initially appeared dressed in drag as the patron saint of pains-in-the-arse Mary Whitehouse! Oh, and he introduced the event by taking part in a skit with our very own Nia Edwards-Behi, Human Centipede 2 star Laurence R. Harvey, and Emma Pett, who is currently conducting her PhD research into Asia Extreme cinema audiences. Needless to say, the tone of the debate was not too heavy, but some interesting topics were raised. Feelings amongst film fans – at least based on the small sample of participants there – seem to be ranging from concern to outrage at present as the BBFC again begins to get heavy with the likes of The Bunny Game and of course The Human Centipede 2. Something which I took away from this strikes me as key to the whole issue: as Martin Barker related, the BBFC want to retain (or even extend) their influence as an organisation. No organisation wants to vote itself out of existence. How do they prevent this? Well, they base their findings on some very selective, very skewed data. If we in the UK want a BBFC which can be challenged on these grounds then we need better research; we can all do our small bit by at least responding to Emma’s survey, which will be presented to the BBFC in due course. You can find it here. 

The Pub Quiz

Leaving aside the fact that my team was robbed, and probably cheated into second place by the bastards from www.horror-extreme.com, this was huge fun and something Abertoir must do again next year!

The Masque of the Red Death Party

Vincent Price has had an important part to play in the Abertoir proceedings since the very beginning, so it was only fitting that in the year of his ‘Vincentennial’ there were lots of events celebrating his horror heritage. Following a screening of arguably the best Corman Poe film – Masque of the Red Death (1964) – came the Masque of the Red Death party, complete with an ape (dummy) affixed to a chandelier, Vincent Price cocktails and live music from The Laze, Ghostfire and Devilish Presley (who had even written a song for the occasion).

Aleister Crowley – a Passion for Evil

Always keen on the multimedia approach, for at least the last three years Abertoir have made it a habit to build in theatrical performances to the programme. This year, the Wickedest Man in the World, Aleister Crowley, got an opportunity to speak once more in a monologue by actor John Burns. Crowley is notoriously difficult to sum up; I wrote a piece on him for the festival programme this year, so I can testify to this. However, Burns had obviously done his research, had a deep interest in his subject material and managed to engage the audience throughout his one-man show. 

Sorcery and Celluloid – a presentation by Gavin Baddeley

(Nepotism alert: I live with Gavin, but I’ll try to be as unbiased a source as possible). Author and broadcaster Gavin Baddeley has spoken at Abertoir for the past three years: his talks have covered vampirism in Europe and the werewolf myth, whilst this year he spoke on the subject of the relationship between the silver screen and magic. Looking back to the years before cinema, Gavin described the popularity of ‘magic lantern’ shows and how their ghosts and ghouls influenced nascent cinema, arguing that cinema was (and is) considered magical in many respects. A run-down of early representations of the occult on screen fed into the idea of ‘cursed movies’ and the importance of The Black Cat, Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, to name a few.

 

Nicko and Joe’s Bad Film Club Presents Mystery Grindhouse: Zombie Lake

Ah, come on, some films badly deserve to be mocked, especially at a late-night, alcohol-fuelled viewing with a crowd of fellow disbelievers. Sometime-auteur Jean Rollin, rest his soul, really blotted his copy-book with Zombie Lake, a film which doesn’t trouble itself with things like…not accidentally filming the crew in a mirror on set, or hiding the fact that the lake is undoubtedly a swimming pool, or worrying about the potential facepalm effect of a plot where a zombie Nazi returns from the dead to spend some quality time with his daughter. Awww. We had these, and many more flaws pointed out to us by one half of comedian team Nicko and Joe, and we were free to join in with our own observations too.

Victoria Price

Last, but absolutely not least…

I mentioned the Vincent Price focus which is key to Abertoir; to close the festival this year, his daughter, Victoria, made the journey from the States to give a presentation on her father’s life. To say this was something special is always going to be an understatement, because there really is no comparison to actually having been there, seen a selection of her family photos, and heard her anecdotes. As much as there was sadness in all of this, ultimately this was a celebration of Vincent Price’s life, and if that sounds like a cliché – it ain’t. I’ll share one story…towards the end of his life, Price was frail, and on a lot of morphine to control his cancer symptoms. As he couldn’t get out of bed, Victoria and some other family members would sit on his bed with him and play general knowledge games. If Vincent was on your team, you were most likely going to win, but as he got steadily more ill, he started to drift in and out of consciousness as they played. This happened during a game of Trivial Pursuit, when his team needed him. The question was, ‘what does a biorchid animal have two of?’ Victoria had no idea. As they debated the question, Vincent stirred a little and muttered something. What he said was, ‘Balls’. 

Hmmm. Thinking this was some strange effect of the morphine, they shrugged their shoulders and carried on debating. At which point, and with a huge effort, Vincent Price rose up from his pillow and repeated the word – which was, of course, the correct answer. ‘BALLS!’

Funny, fascinating and very moving, Victoria Price’s speech rounded off the festival brilliantly and although she didn’t follow her father into acting, she certainly inherited his skill as a speaker.

So, it’s goodbye to my favourite horror festival and a ‘see you next year’ from me. Look out for reviews of my pick of the Abertoir film selection appearing in the next couple of days, and I hope to see some of you in 2012. In the meantime, I know who one of the guests will be, and it’s all good…

 

Definitive Directors: Yoshihiro Nishimura

Posted on by Admin

by Ben Bussey.

The last few years have given rise to a wave of Japanese exploitation cinema that is in many respects truly unlike anything that we have seen before: films which centre on people, more often than not pretty young women, with bizarre cybernetic limb replacements – lethally sharp, mechanised appendages that drip with ooze and protrude from the body where once there were arms, legs, and more besides – who proceed to utilise these deadly cybernetic body parts against their enemies to staggeringly gruesome effect. Sure, on a conceptual level such visions might not seem especially new and unique from the country that gave the world anime, but rarely to my knowledge have such tales been told in live action, and certainly not captured in relatively lo-fi DV with such ridiculous, excessive gore FX.

Arguably the key figure in this new wave of J-sploitation is Yoshihiro Nishimura. Scan through the credits of most of these films and certain names crop up more than once, but surely none appears more often than his, primarily because he has served as special make-up effects designer/artist or supervisor on pretty much every gory Japanese film of note from the past decade: Suicide Club, The Machine Girl, Meatball Machine, Samurai Princess and RoboGeisha to name but a few. Check out his IMDB page; there are 65 make-up credits to his name thus far, all but two from the last ten years.

This alone would be enough to pinpoint Nishimura as a major player in modern horror. But of course, the name of this column is Definitive Directors, and it so happens that he’s also responsible for directing what is surely the greatest, most influential J-sploitaion film of the 2000s; a film he also co-wrote, edited, and again designed the FX for. While his subsequent directorial work may not have quite met the same standard, his films are never less than eye-catching; and it should be emphasised that, contrary to what some might think, this is not down to the gore alone. While the abundant gloop and pus may be the key sales point, scrape all that viscera aside for a moment and you can’t fail to note the equally virulent brand of satirical humour that permeates his work. And never more so than in his masterwork…

 

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

Would anyone dispute that this is the definitive modern Japanese gore film? Some might argue in favour of Noboro Iguchi’s The Machine Girl; a notable film for certain, which does predate Tokyo Gore Police (although only just, having also come out in 2008) and as such might be regarded equally vital to kickstarting this new subgenre. But as gory and darkly funny as The Machine Girl is, Iguchi’s vision does not come close to the sheer scope of Nishimura’s here. Not only is Tokyo Gore Police a considerably larger scale film on a practical level, spreading its action across way more locations and characters with a far greater number of cybernetically enhanced killers, but also the film covers a far broader canvas thematically, with many barbed comments made about 21st century Japan, most of which are equally applicable to the west.

The set-up is that in the Japan of the near future, a new breed of criminal has arisen known as Engineers: genetically modified, borderline indestructible, invariably psychotic murderers who grow back a deadly cyber-organic body part whenever they are injured. One of the few humans capable of taking them down is Ruka (Eihi Shiina), a cop on the Engineer squad of the now-privatised Tokyo Police. She slaughters her prey with efficiency and emotional detachment whilst trying to forget that her father, in whose footsteps she followed to the job, was assassinated for protesting against police privatisation. Her only release comes in self-harm, regularly cutting herself with the same detachment she brings to killing Engineers. But as she investigates deeper into the underworld of the Engineers, events force her to reassess her loyalties. (And let’s not forget that, though the core plot is similar, this was a year before District 9.)

As we might deem fitting for a film dealing with people pieced together from various machines, Nishimura lifts bits and pieces from a wide range of notable filmmakers: Cronenberg, with the core conceits of body horror and disease as metamorphosis; Verhoeven, with the emphasis on excess, anti-corporate sentiments, and the broad lampooning of mass media via the Robocop/Starship Troopers-esque TV ads (words cannot express how much I love the fact that they use the theme music from the Masters of the Universe movie); Tarantino, with the diverse, often 70s tinged soundtrack and visions of Tokyo that echo Kill Bill (or perhaps that’s just my western perspective speaking, given how influential Japanese cinema has been on Tarantino); Raimi, Gordon, Yuzna and Jackson, with the ludicrous cartoonish bloodshed; even a bit of Argento, in the scenes of a leather-gloved killer stalking women. Takashi Miike’s influence can also be felt, owing in no small part to the presence of Miss “Kiri Kiri Kiri” herself, Eihi Shiina. Casting her as Ruka was an inspired move; thanks to Audition she is established not only for being as alluring as she is terrifying, but also as a real actress to be reckoned with, which frankly cannot be said of a great many J-sploitation actresses. Despite the overwhelming absurdity of proceedings, Nishimura gets an entirely serious performance from Shiina, which helps lend the film a harder edge than many of the films that have come in its wake. Ruka’s journey is the driving force of the narrative, and as such the film does lose some momentum when she is off-screen, which unfortunately is the case too often, particularly around two thirds in.

Then there’s Shiina’s notable co-star: the gore. Yowser. I think we can safely assume there are individual scenes here with more arterial spray than all the Lone Wolf and Cub films put together. And as if that wasn’t enough, there are the physical disfigurations of the Engineers themselves. I recall before Grindhouse came out, Rose McGowan said that amputee fetishists would have a lot of fun with Planet Terror; well, from that standpoint Tokyo Gore Police is pornographic enough to make Planet Terror look like The Blue Lagoon. I could do the list of the many varied body modifications that rear their ugly-yet-strangely-attractive heads, but that would deprive the unitiated of half the pleasure of the film, whilst those who’ve seen the film will doubtless need no reminder; suffice to say the young lady in the photograph above who takes ‘vagina detante’ to a whole new level is a good indication of what to expect. If you were wondering what there was left to do with the human body on film, well; here’s some of it.

But once again, this is not the beginning and the end of the film; this is not just mindlessly excessive body horror entirely for its own sake. In-keeping with Cronenberg and Verhoeven, this is gore with purpose. These hideous creations can be seen as reflective of the society that produced them, the dehumanising effects of the system made flesh, so it is by no means accidental that the Engineers wind up more sympathetic than the cops. Yes, it’s done for comedic value, but doesn’t the best comedy usually tap into genuine concerns and issues?

Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl (2009)

Co-directed with Naoyuki Tomomatsu (subsequent director of Erotibot), this is a somewhat smaller scale film in every sense, but a charming one nonetheless. Where Tokyo Gore Police grafted its frenzied blood orgy onto the cop movie, here we have a similar approach taken to the high school romantic comedy. In a curious way, it’s a pretty standard chick flick; teenage arch rivals, the queen bee and the new girl, do battle over the affections of the same boy. Why, you could almost envisage Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff acting in such a movie. Only in this instance ‘do battle’ is not just a figure of speech, and the girls in question are a vampire, and a Frankenstein monster (once she’s suffered a squishy demise and been rebuilt by her mad scientist/biology teacher father). The fact that the doe-eyed boy unwittingly caught at the centre of the conflict is basically given no choice in the matter and doesn’t particularly care for either girl only makes the whole thing more amusing.

It may feature two of the greatest horror staples, but don’t go in expecting anything remotely resembling the Universal or Hammer classics here. Nishimura and Tomomatsu simply take two monsters that need no introduction and use them as a convienient access point to a ridiculously over the top spoof of teen movie conventions and teen culture. However, while the movie conventions may be pretty universal, some of the cultural references are a wee bit more specific to Japan. I don’t know if this is the case on all DVD editions of Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl, but on the UK edition from 4 Digital Media the film has a fair few explanatory subtitles: for instance, an opening panel informs us of the Japanese tradition of girls giving chocolate on Valentine’s Day, so we will understand the significance of the chocolate that vampire girl Monami (Yukie Kawamura) sneaks to her object of affection Mizushima (Takumi Saitô); and later, when soon-to-be Frankenstein girl Keiko (Eri Otoguro) tells their teacher that Monami indulges in ‘compensated dating,’ this is explained as young women going with older men in exchange for gifts.

These explanatory subtitles are never more welcome than when the film introduces… gulp… the Ganguro Girls. They may be minor players in the narrative, but they may well be the most unavoidably memorable element of the film. Why? Because on first glance, the only reaction to the Ganguro Girls is for the viewer to slap the hand directly over the mouth and gasp JESUS CHRIST. To explain: they’re Japanese girls made up to look African. But more than that, the girls here are in prosthetics that blow their faces up to grotesque proportions, caricaturing African stereotypes in a manner that is shocking to say the least. Thanks to the subtitles and a bit of subsequent reading, I am now aware that Ganguro is an actual recent trend in Japanese youth culture, and once you learn that these scenes become a little easier to take; as with Ali G, the butt of the joke is not black people, but those who try to appropriate a black identity in the absence of any identity of their own. Even so, it’s hard to watch these scenes without at least wincing a little, and without a doubt many will be truly offended. On top of which, some will undoubtedly not take kindly to the other notable outsider clique: the school wrist-cutter team, trying out for the national wrist-cutting rally.

Of course, if they have offended audiences far and wide, it seems fair to assume Nishimura and Tomamatsu will not be losing any sleep over it. In common with a lot of modern horror, this is filmmaking that seeks to get a reaction, to shock and outrage those with delicate sensibilities. The key difference, however, is the overall tone and intent. From the over-the-top characterisations, garish colour scheme, bubblegum soundtrack and overall sex appeal (all the principle females are uniformally gorgeous, and just as in RoboGeisha male lead Takumi Saitô is equally good looking), it is clear that Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl is first and foremost intended to entertain. This seems to be true of most J-sploitation, and it is far from the prevailing Raison d’être of the genre today. There’s a lot to be said for this emphasis on entertainment value, I think. As much as there is to admire about the likes of A Serbian Film, Red White and Blue and The Woman, there can be little question that these are not films intended to show you a good time; as Keri rightly said in her review of The Woman, they are films “made to be discussed first and enjoyed second.” Of course we horror fans should welcome cinema which aims to confront and challenge the audience, but really, is there anything so wrong with horror movies that are just plain fun? If we’re honest, didn’t most of us who are fans of the genre gravitate towards it because of films which are a good laugh to watch: the camp and corny creature features, the slashers and splatter movies?

It took me a while to warm to them, but I have no reservations now in celebrating Nishimura’s films, and contemporary J-sploitation overall. They serve as an agreeable reminder that horror can be plainly and simply entertaining, and that this is a perfectly acceptable goal. Yes, there is plenty of food for thought to go along with the gore if you care to look for it, but otherwise these are films in which it is no problem to just kick back and enjoy the ride. Regretably I’ve yet to see Nishimura’s more recent directorial efforts Helldriver and Mutant Girls Squad, but I gather more of the same can be expected from both, and I can’t say I have a problem with that. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is a wave of filmmaking that I truly believe stands apart, comprising a body of work as distinct as that of Hammer Horror, the Italian zombie movie or the first wave of slashers, and when history recognises them as such, it will also acknowlege Yoshihiro Nishimura as the man responsible for the best of it.

 

Thrill Me! 25 Years of ‘Night of the Creeps’

Posted on by Admin

by Ben Bussey

READER ADVISORY: spoilers ahead (though perhaps that’s a given on a retrospective…)

22nd August 1986; a day that will live in… well, I can’t honestly say I have any conscious memory of that particular day. I was six years old and living in North-East England. As such, I certainly wasn’t aware that it was the day on which Night of the Creeps was unleashed into US cinemas. It’s fair to assume a great many Americans were also unaware of this, given how poorly it performed at the box office. But now, a full twenty-five years on, it’s a film well worth rediscovering. It might not be what anyone would class as a masterpiece, but nonetheless it’s a thoroughly endearing, rewatchable, quotable, oddball genre mish-mash that oozes film geek chic. It’s inescapably 80s, but at once timeless, and yet somehow ahead of its time too in some respects. Not bad for the directorial debut of a filmmaker who more or less sprang up from nowhere and would, alas, soon enough disappear back there.

To throw a little light on my personal relationship with this film, I must first confess that I only saw it for the first time about three or four years ago. Even after spending a fair percentage of my formative years browsing the lower shelves of my local video rental stores, I was never aware of it growing up, and it has yet to recieve a Region 2 DVD release. But when I got the chance to see it that day three or four years ago, I couldn’t miss it for one simple reason: Fred Dekker, the writer-director responsible for what remains my absolute favourite film of all time. No, funnily enough I don’t mean Robocop 3. So given that Dekker has to date directed only three feature films, that means, yes, I’m talking about The Monster Squad. I’ve made no secret of just how much that film means to me, and perhaps I will elaborate further if/when I do a 25th anniversary retrospective on The Monster Squad around about this time next year. But for now let’s keep the focus on my first encounter with Night of the Creeps; seeing through adult eyes the first film of a director whose second film left an indelible impact on my childhood.

I won’t lie, the main thought that kept echoing in my mind throughout the first half hour or so was, “What the hell am I watching?”

Now, obviously I don’t mean that I thought it was bad; I’m not such a masochist as to sit down to write a retrospective on a film I’m not a fan of. What I mean is I literally couldn’t figure the damn film out at first. Very little is given away by the initial title sequence, which appropriately enough simply highlights the title, in a font agreeably reminiscent of EC Comics (Dekker has likened the logo to that of Famous Monsters of Filmland). Next thing you know we’re on a spaceship, watching an amusingly dome-headed alien rushing down a corridor clutching a canister. Right, so we’re watching a sci-fi movie then. But wait… now it’s suddenly gone black and white and we’re on Sorority Row in 1959. Long-skirted, cardigan-wearing college girls beam into telephones about dreamy guys, the radio hums with the sound of crooning, and a girl goes for a drive in her boyfriend’s convertible. Okay, so it’s an homage to 50s teen movies instead. But then a comet comes down to earth, It Came From Outer Space style; ah, so we’re back to sci-fi. But hang on; now there’s an axe-wielding escaped mental patient in the mix. So what, it’s a slasher too now? And he’s raising his axe to strike, when all of a sudden we cut to the same Sorority Row in 1986, everything’s Technicolor again, some distinctly 80s soft rock fills the air, and we overhear a couple of nerdy young men ruminating on heartbreak. So where are we now, John Hughesville?

While we’re nit-picking, we might also note that Night of the Creeps is hardly the most appropriate title, given that – even if we discount the 1959 prologue – the action takes place over the course of several days. Hmm… Long Weekend of the Creeps, perhaps…?

And we’re not even half done. We haven’t got to the cryogenically frozen body, or the Cronenbergian parasitic slug-type things that turn people into zombies, or the necessity of both shotguns and flamethrowers, or the old school cop who saves the day and steals the movie. Yes, there’s quite a lot going on here. One almost wants to credit Dekker with some clairvoyance as to how regrettably short-lived his career would turn out to be, as Night of the Creeps feels like the work of someone who wants to squeeze pretty much all the stuff he likes into a single movie for fear that he might never get another chance. All this considered you’d be forgiven for assuming the results would be a god-awful mess, but no. Far from reeking of contrivance and desperation, as it might have in less capable hands, Night of the Creeps instead radiates pure enthusiasm for film, and – much as is true of The Monster Squad – this spirit proves highly infectious. Why, you could almost say it’s as if it gets into your brain and takes hold of you.

And the great thing is, in spite of the convoluted plot in which it is eventually explained that brain-eating alien organisms are zombifying much of the college campus, what really draws you in and hooks you is the cast. Dekker may have overloaded everything conceptually, but he clearly understands that the key to really drawing the audience in is protagonists they can care about and relate to. Henceforth, we have Jason Lively’s Chris, and Steve Marshall’s JC. Both young actors (Lively was only 18), and neither exactly boasting teen idol good looks, they’re the loser underdogs that so many of us feel we are. But what they lack in alpha male virility they more than make up in wit, Chris ever ready with some pithy self-deprecation and JC constantly spouting overconfident wisecracks. They could easily pass as a prototype for all the best buddy relationships that later became the staple of Kevin Smith, except Smith never threw his characters into quite so freakish a scenario as Dekker does here. (Well, aside from Dogma.)

Then we have the girl who steals the heart of our young hero: Jill Whitlow as Cynthia. This would seem a good place to acknowledge that, while Night of the Creeps by no means excludes the girls in the audience, it’s ultimately more for the boys. The character of Cynthia highlights this as, frankly, she’s pure male wish-fulfillment; an utterly romanticised, idealised icon of femininity. Chris sees her from at least fifty yards away and it’s love at first sight. This first impression is soon validated; while she may at first be dating the alpha frat boy scumbag, she proves to be sensitive and pure of heart, taking Chris and JC’s side, and coming to them in her hour of need. Chris’s victory is ultimately sealed by the fact that he gets the girl in the end. Does any of this ring true to reality, or present an especially progressive stance on gender relations? Not really. But then, this isn’t exactly a realistic film. If we can overlook such concerns and accept the character as is, Whitlow does a wonderful job. And despite the fact that she briefly appears topless (which rather breaks those ‘final girl’ rules), there’s a refreshing lack of voyeurism by comparison with the way female love interests are typically presented today. Dekker’s camera doesn’t leer the way, say, Michael Bay’s does; it’s more of a longing, puppy-dog gaze. The nude scene notwithstanding, Dekker is less interested in scrutinizing Whitlow’s anatomy than he is in striving to show her heart. This serves to emphasise that Chris’s feelings are not limited to lust; he doesn’t just want to get laid, he wants to make a real, personal connection with this girl. Twilight fans would probably approve. That said, let’s not forget that Cynthia also gets to kick all kinds of zombie ass by the end, so she ain’t all sweetness and light. Which, of course, boosts her fanboy object of desire status even further. (You never see Bella bust out a flamethrower, do you?)

But if John Hughes adolescents don’t quite grab you, how about a hard-drinking, hard-boiled detective in a vintage car and a trenchcoat, who’s got a score to settle with all things undead? Enter Tom Atkins as Ray Cameron, seemingly walking right off the pages of a pulp novel into this pop culture collage of a movie. If you’re ever to hear someone casually quoting Night of the Creeps, a hundred to one says they’re quoting Atkins. The knowledgable and observant will already have noted that I did it myself in the title of this article; “thrill me,” the signature one-liner with which he makes his presence known. Nor is that his only memorable line: “It’s Miller time!” “Detective Cameron? – No, Bullwinkle Moose!” Then there’s the one they put on the poster: “Well girls, I got some good news and some bad news…” Music to a film geek’s ears. If Lively, Marshall and Whitlow give the film its heart, Atkins really gives it some balls. Though he certainly does give it some heart too, which we’ll come back to later.

The point I keep returning to here is what a real film geek movie Night of the Creeps is. This much is evident immediately from the disorienting genre-hopping of the first few scenes, and it really gets hammered home as we catch the names of our principal characters: Chris Romero, JC Hooper (the initials standing for John Carpenter), Cynthia Cronenberg, Ray Cameron; there are even cops named Landis and Raimi, and a janitor named Mr Miner. (Okay, so we don’t generally hold Steve Miner in such high regard nowadays, but he did give Dekker his first Hollywood job as a writer by filming House, and also did some uncredited second unit work here, shooting the dressing up montage prior to the sorority house finale.) Then of course there’s the sure-fire signifier of any cult movie, the Dick Miller cameo. This abundance of references to genre cinema both old and (at the time) new gives the movie a knowing edge that was arguably not too common in the 80s. This was six years before Reservoir Dogs and a decade before Scream; intertextual referencing was not yet hip and groovy. Is it fair to call the movie a trailblazer in this regard? Given that it wasn’t a hit on release, and that I only saw it myself for the first time three or four years ago, I couldn’t really say with any authority. But I certainly get the feeling it might have been.

Here was the part where I had hoped to heap particular praise on Dekker for his subtle homage to Plan 9 From Outer Space, in showing Ray Cameron stop to sniff the roses; the same roses which are framed against the backdrop of the burning sorority house in the final moments. My intent had been to highlight not only how Dekker referenced Plan 9 before it was trendy to do so (Burton’s Ed Wood didn’t show up for another eight years), but also how he didn’t make a cheap gag out of it; how he implicitly relates the tragic figure of Bela Lugosi to that of Ray Cameron, a man left similarly broken by loss, pain and regret. However, on the DVD commentary Dekker insists that he was not consciously referencing Plan 9 (even though footage from the film itself is present, on the house mother’s TV), and that the sniff of the roses was entirely Tom Atkins’ idea. So bang goes that theory.

Still, one movie that is most definitely referenced more than once here is Jaws. Dekker has long since declared Spielberg’s breakthrough classic to be his favourite movie, and he borrows a few of the film’s most famous shots to good effect. Note Ray Cameron’s early dream sequence, in which edits are hidden by beach-strolling bodies passing the camera, and later the iconic ‘warp zoom’ utilised when Cameron comes face to face with the re-animated axe murderer. It’s notable that all these fancy, heroic shots tend to feature Tom Atkins; see also the rotating dolly shot in which Cameron spins around roaring, taking out three zombies in a row. If we want to get a bit psychoanalytical, we could certainly say that Dekker seems to be living out his fanboy fantasies through this old tough guy character; we get the impression that Chris and JC reflect the kind of person he really is (or, at least, was at the time), whilst Ray Cameron is the kind of guy he fantasises about being. A great many men in the audience feel much the same, I think it’s safe to say.

And can you believe I’ve spent this long talking about a sci-fi horror comedy and haven’t even touched on the monsters yet? It’s as though, in Dekker’s world, the parasites of Cronenberg’s Shivers gave birth not to liberated sex fiends but the classic zombies of Night of the Living Dead. They don’t set out to redesign the wheel here, delivering simple, pale skinned, white-eyed shuffling corpses, but the real ace up the sleeve is the unique method of dispatch. It really feels like the culmination of a pub debate: “What’s cooler, blowing their brains out or burning them alive?” “Hey, I know – what if we blow their brains out, AND burn them alive?” “AWESOME!” And it really is. What a fun-filled final reel it gives us, with Chris, Cynthia and Cameron wasting creeps every which way. We also can’t fail to notice a pre-Braindead (or, for y’all Americans, Dead Alive) use of a lawnmower. It’s certainly not the goriest climax the 80s gave us, but it sure is some good, brain-blasting entertainment.

But before we pack away Night of the Creeps and pop it on the shelf marked ‘pure escapist fantasy,’ we would do well to acknowledge its harsher, bolder elements. First off, let’s address JC’s disability. It’s rare indeed for one of the leads in a film to be disabled without it ever being made an issue of, but that’s very much the case here. Steve Marshall mentions on the DVD that Dekker never discussed it with him, but he has since come to understand that JC’s impairment feeds his hardened, wisecracking nature; in the few times his crutches are directly drawn attention to it’s JC making a joke out of it, saying “funny as a crutch,” or miming a machine gun with them. Does this make it any more tragic when JC is killed? It goes without saying that an able-bodied person stands a better chance of escaping the deadly situation JC finds himself trapped in, and the fact that the film is willing to kill its most vulnerable character is a powerful statement of intent, lending an unexpectedly hard edge to what is for the most part a fairly light-hearted affair.

Nor does the hard edge stop there. I’ve already alluded to the tragic, tortured side of Ray Cameron; this goes beyond the melancholic and into the suicidal. Having almost thirty years earlier lost the woman he loved to an axe murdering maniac that same night a botched biological experiment from outer space fell to earth (boy, don’t shrinks get tired of hearing that one), Cameron has never come to terms with his grief, and would most likely have drunk himself to death already were it not for the job. Such characters were popular in 80s Hollywood, Rambo and Riggs being other notable examples of traumatised, suicidal men unable to adapt to normal life, whose only release comes through violence. The key difference, however, is that while those action men found redemption and a new sense of purpose, Cameron gets his wish and is allowed to kill himself. Yes, he destroys the alien parasite menace in doing so, but does that perhaps only serve to validate that which he was intent on doing regardless? Let’s not forget that before Chris shows up to seek his help on that fateful night, he was all set to blow up his own house, and himself with it. When he gets to do it in the sorority house instead, it’s a double-barrelled cathartic impact; the creeps are defeated and Cameron’s out of his misery, and it would appear we’re invited to take comfort in both. Does this make Night of the Creeps a pro-suicide/assisted death horror movie? Is there a moralist protest in waiting here…?

Some of you are almost certainly accusing me of overthinking the movie now; you feel the correct response to Night of the Creeps is just to embrace the absurdity, and enjoy it. And neither of us is wrong. That’s the real beauty of a good genre film: whether you want to intellectualise or just kick back, it gives you scope to do both. This is definitely the case with Night of the Creeps. This is a big part of what makes it such an easy film to revisit, and take new pleasures from with every viewing; even though I first saw it only three or four years ago, I’ve certainly made up for lost time since. Most of all, Night of the Creeps stands proud alongside The Monster Squad as – box office be damned – a twin triumph for Fred Dekker. (Let’s just agree not to talk about Robocop 3.) As Dekker himself has remarked, perhaps it’s better to have done a couple of films that mean a hell of a lot to a comparatively small audience, than to have made a whole bunch of films that no one really cares about. Given how the output of so many of the genre greats tends to go downhill with time and age – take Dekker’s acknowledged heroes Romero, Carpenter and Hooper – maybe we should be glad that Dekker, in an indirect kind of way, quit while he was ahead. (Hey – we agreed not to mention the R word…) He may have aspired to Spiebergian status, and there’s not a doubt in my mind that with a different roll of the dice he could have got there, but instead Fred Dekker has had to make do with being responsible for two bona fide cult classics. I should hope that’s good enough for all of us.

So here’s to 25 years of Night of the Creeps. You sure have thrilled me. Oh, and look at that, I managed to get through this whole thing without saying a single derogatory word about Slither…

Nia's Round-up of the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival

Posted on by Admin

Report by Nia Edwards-Behi

The Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, held yearly over a two-week period, guarantees a showcase of the best up-and-coming genre offerings. Although drawing in massive crowds to an impressive venue, the sense of tradition and convention at the festival is evident – watching a film with the BIFFF regulars is a great experience in and of itself, with noisy but appreciative attention paid to each offering by a dedicated audience. Next year’s festival is the 3oth, and I’ve no doubt that it’s this sense of community that keeps the festival thriving. Here’s a really brief round-up of some of the films that were on offer that haven’t yet been reviewed.

Mirages (Talal Selhami, Morocco/France, 2010)
Excellent feature debut from Talal Selhami, which offers an original setting for what could have been a run-of-the-mill psychological thriller. Strong characterisation and performances ensure that this is a very promising debut, even if the ending is a little drawn out. Gladly, the film also refuses to fall into the trap of looking cheap, with an impressive and judicious use of visual effects never truly betraying the film’s low budget.

Midnight Son (Scott Leberecht, USA, 2011)
Superb horror-romance that’s a successor to the likes of Martin and Near Dark, Midnight Son was one of my favourite films of the festival. Telling the tale of a young man with a rare skin disease that requires he work nights to avoid sunlight, his chance meeting and romance with a woman coincides with his increasingly violent behaviour. A film that sounds run-of-the-mill to summarise, the film is tightly plotted, beautifully written and acted earnestly. I truly cared for the characters, and as such Midnight Son is a much needed breath of fresh air for the vampire film.

Kidnapped (Miguel Angel Vivas, Spain, 2010)
A superb genre offering from Spain, Miguel Angel Vivas’ Kidnapped is a visual tour-de-force, offering what could’ve been an average home invasion tale in 12 continuous shots. Utterly nasty and frighteningly realistic, the film never shies away from the brutality and helplessness that acts of violence bring. A highlight of the film is the excellent performance of Manuela Velles as the terrified but desperately defiant teenage daughter of the family under attack. It’s been a long time since a thriller had me so thrilled, Kidnapped is a film to be experienced.

Red Nights (Julien Carbon & Laurent Courtiaud, Hong Kong/France/Belgium, 2010)
This attractive erotic thriller just about manages to hold attention for its full-running time, helped by charismatic leads, even when they’re at their most histrionic. A convoluted and melodramatic plot about an ancient poison that paralyses its victim while increasing their sensitivity, the film is entirely concerned with the sensual, both in narrative and in construction. Featuring a particularly nasty torture scene and an inventive opening 15-minutes, Red Nights is enjoyable hokum.

Urban Explorer (Andy Fetscher, Germany, 2011)
The interesting setting of this otherwise generic survival horror only stays interesting for about 20 minutes. In the underground tunnels of Berlin a group of continental youths meet up with their guide, for some ‘urban exploring’. Things, naturally, soon start to go horribly wrong, but by the time we get to know the villain a little bit the novelty has worn off and the utter insipidness of the supposed ‘heroine’ the film becomes too distracting to bear. Though enjoyable enough, and fairly commendable for its ending, Urban Explorer is ultimately more memorable for its weaknesses than its strengths.

Ferozz: The Wild Red Riding Hood (Jorge Molina, Cuba/Costa Rica, 2010)
Ferozz is a surprisingly captivating film which re-tells the Red Riding Hood story as an erotic coming-of-age tale. At times reminiscent of the Javi Camino’s excellent Maldito Bastardo!, while at other times reminiscent of the worst sort of amateurism, it’s hard to tell if this surrealist film is good, bad, or just plain taking the piss. Containing scenes you won’t soon forget, Ferozz is without a doubt a film that needs to be seen to be believed.

Bestseller (Jeong-ho Lee, South Korea, 2011)
Excellent thriller which is severely let down by being about 30 minutes too long. Even so, it’s hard not to enjoy the film’s twists, and the strong central performance from Uhm Jung-Hwa as a novelist accused of plagiarism whose behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, keeps the most dragged out of plot turns just about entertaining.

Keepsake (Paul Moore, USA, 2008)
The charmless characters and the repetitive ‘plot’ of this film lead to an incredibly dull experience, complete with non-sensical twist. That it’s taken so long to see the light of day might be indicative, as it cynically attempts to be ‘torture porn’ as a means of pandering to an audience. Keepsake is only worth mentioning as a warning to avoid it.

Editor’s note: in case you missed Nia’s earlier BIFFF coverage, check out her reviews of Stake Land, Tetsuo 3: The Bullet Man, Horny House of Horrors & Helldriver.