Keri O'Shea

Childhood Terrors – ‘Sugar and spice and all things nice’: Misty Comics and Horror for Girls (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

(For the first part of this article, please click here.)

Signs of the Times

Although Misty focused on supernatural and fantastical goings-on in its stories, between the lines it was still very much a product of the late seventies and early eighties, with plenty of evidence of the social and political situation of the time. Indeed, the comic itself was stopped from being published at several points during its lifespan due to union strikes. Despite the fact that we are again, at the time of writing, undergoing financial upheaval and the threat of recession, the world at large is still tremendously changed, especially with regards to our attitudes to children. Looking back on the views and conventions unconsciously reflected in the Misty comics, some of these changes are particularly striking, such as the following…

In the story ‘Rag Doll’, not only has our heroine Rachel spent her life in an orphanage where she is expected to work in the kitchens as payment for her ungrateful ‘moping’, but she is also repeatedly caned by one of the workers simply for being miserable. Although this is evidently intended to make the readers feel pity for Rachel, the casual inclusion of the corporal punishment angle reminds us that when this story was printed, it was an accepted part of a child’s life, and remained as such for the whole of Misty’s tenure. Corporal punishment in state schools in England and Wales wasn’t officially banned until ’87. State involvement with childcare was altogether more hard-line in Misty’s day: in the story ‘Somewhere’ (printed in the same 1981 annual as Rag Doll) the female character is warned about wandering the streets while a ‘Borstal boy who’d escaped from a working party’ was still on the loose. It’s rather a different state of affairs to today’s increased emphasis on non-custodial punishments, ostensibly to avoid the shadow of institutionalisation. Yet the very name ‘Borstal’ once conjured up parental fear of the types of kids who might have ever been sent there.

Poverty, social alienation and strikes are also represented in Misty’s pages: for example, a bus strike means a girl has to cycle to a nearby town in ‘The Thing in Chains’, inconveniencing her and throwing her into the path of a spectral dancing bear, all at the same time. But perhaps most of all in Misty, the most sympathetic characters on offer were those having a distressing time on account of their difference to their peers, which usually took the form of an impoverished background. Threading through many of the stories are the girls’ feelings of frustration and sadness, often on behalf of their families as much as for themselves. In ‘Stranger in my Mirror’, Mary Mallory struggles to be a good girl, holding down a paper-round just to give the money to her mother. They’re in rent arrears, the landlord is harassing them, and their life isn’t easy. For most of the girls, school is definitely not a supportive environment, but a world of draconian punishments, bereft of sympathy and understanding. Bullying, though this takes place both in and out of school, is a common theme in Misty.

It’s also often the impetus behind the kind of desperation which frequently afflicts our heroines and thus drives the plot in the comic. One of the most poignant – and popular – Misty serials ran under the title ‘Winner Loses All!’ The story, basically the Faust myth updated to 70s England, featured some of the most macabre artwork the comic ever ran. Its protagonist, Sandy Morton, lives with her widower father, once a renowned show-jumper, but now a humble stable-hand battling alcoholism and poverty. Determined to restore him to his former glories, she accepts the offer of a Mr. Dayville (‘Devil’) who promises to do just that – in return for her soul – leading to a battle of wills between a teenage girl and Satan himself. For this troubled teen, the road to Hell really is paved with good intentions…

For the comic’s original readership, being able to identify with the protagonists in the stories was vital to making them engaging. Sharing aspirations, experiences and attitudes with their heroines doubtless made the stories seem more believable for Misty’s young fans, even when other supernatural aspects of the plot stretched plausibility. For the modern reader revisiting the stories today, this identification has inevitably largely changed to nostalgia – or perhaps more accurately, an interest in the time-capsule effect of exploring the publication anew and recognising the many changes. Of course, the stories themselves are still a lot of fun, but reading between the lines has also become a pleasure. At times, spotting the differences between life then and now moves into the foreground, ahead of the tales told: what was taken for granted when these were written is now noteworthy for us.

Of course, it wasn’t all peril and plight. There was some comic relief available in Misty: the comic strips which provided it were also the only strips to appear on a regular basis. These were: Miss T – a much more orthodox, pointed-hat-and-broomstick-crone who often fraternised with cartoon versions of the famous Universal monsters amongst others, and Cilla the Chiller, a schoolgirl ghost. These were much more in the vein of traditional British comics like the Dandy or Beano in their style of humour, and divided the Misty audience somewhat. Some readers felt that the lighter tone of these strips didn’t fit very well with the rest of the magazine.

There were also more practical activities and gifts for Misty fans: the first three issues came with free gifts which reflected the comic’s distinctive flavour, being a charm bracelet, an Egyptian Bast ring (as featured in ‘The Cult of the Cat’ in the very first Misty) and a fortune-telling wallet. There were also plenty of things to make and do. Perhaps one of the most fun sides to Misty were the horror-styled spins on what are considered more conventional feminine pastimes, like cooking and crafts. The popular BBC TV kids’ show Blue Peter, for all of its focus on making things at home, would only dare allow itself to cover the same ground at Halloween. At Misty, the distinction between Halloween and the rest of the year just wasn’t there. Enjoy baking? Misty could help you to make a Devil’s Cake, or if you had ‘a sweet fang’, a Dracula’s Dream Dessert, with raspberry purée for the blood and bananas for the fangs. The 1985 annual taught us how to make chocolate coffins, and the ’86 annual invited girls to use foodstuffs for a spooky touch-test; savoy cabbage leaves made convincing ‘bats’ wings’. Of course, if you preferred handicrafts you could be shown how to do anything from ‘monsterfying’ a margarine tub to creating masks to making your own shrunken heads with papier mâché (‘Why not make a whole bunch of them to hang by the hair on a hook on your bedroom wall?’) The types of stories and characters referenced in these activities evidenced the wealth of horror and New Age archetypes all happily co-existing in the pages of a girls’ comic. Alongside references to Dracula, Frankenstein and lycanthropy were how-to guides on herbalism, palmistry, ESP and ‘How To Make Your Own Priestess’s Jewels’. Under the Misty remit, a whole host of characters, phenomena and ideas from within the horror genre and beyond were used to pitch ideas for games and activities to an eager readership. And, if readers wanted to write their own ghost stories, or go on their own ghost hunts, Misty offered ideas there too.

Misty’s Legacy

Sadly, before Misty was really an established force majeure, the downturn in the comics industry struck and in a cost-cutting measure the publisher merged it with their more traditional Tammy. It proved a miserable arranged marriage that saw the Misty content and logo gradually shrink into the background. Because Misty had such a short tenure, and because its supernatural stylings were diminished so soon after the Tammy merger by unsympathetic editorial decisions, it’s difficult to judge whether this girls’ comic could have gone on to greater things. While many of the readers who loved it like to think so, this will always remain speculation. However, although Misty was no more, there were still talented British comics professionals who had seen a future for innovative titles with a darker edge that treated their readers with a little more respect than the tired, conventional titles lined up on UK news-stands. Not least, one Pat Mills.

Mills who illustrated for Misty – including the popular serial Moonchild – had also been involved with a seminal comic which we would all probably recognise. This title was 2000AD, a now-legendary title home to popular characters, like Judge Dredd. Despite the wavering market, 2000AD was a hit. Misty may have taken a final bow, but comics as a medium were not dead, only changing. Pat Mills had helped spearhead a new generation of comics writers and artists who pioneered a more mature tone and style, which in turn paved the way for comics which were cool for sophisticated teens, and ultimately legitimate entertainment for adults. Perhaps there’s a nice circularity here; it could be that the enduring legacy of a legend in the field, who once drew for Misty, once encouraged the recent interest in reprints and the rediscovery of old comics – not least Misty itself.

For a comic which lacked longevity, Misty has endured with great tenacity in the hearts of its original fans. This is borne out by its reappearance in recent years, thanks to the efforts of mistycomic.co.uk, a fan-based site who started by creating an online archive of the comic in 2002.. The popularity of the archive was such that, within a year of being live, the site owners were looking into publishing a Misty Special, featuring new stories and artwork. A Halloween Special did in fact appear in 2006, another Special hit the shelves in 2009, and now – who knows – perhaps the Child of the Mists may yet venture back again… As someone who can thank Misty for the understanding that creepy could be fun, I sincerely hope she will. Bela Lugosi once said, ‘It is women who love horror’; I think we can agree on that, and perhaps for many of us, it all starts when we are young, sometimes with something as simple as a comic.

Childhood Terrors – Confessions of a Late Bloomer

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Nia Edwards-Behi

I wasn’t a horror ‘fan’ as a child, per se. I certainly didn’t have anything against the genre. However, I was an avid fan of the Goosebumps series of books. More than that, I’m fairly certain that the Goosebumps series was my first contact with the horror genre. I know I read a lot of them, but only a few of the titles still stick in my memory – namely, Piano Lessons Can Be Murder, because, at the time, I was learning to play the piano, got a bit stuck at that awkward grade 3 point and hated it. The catchiest titles – Say Cheese and Die! or Night of the Living Dummy – are the ones I remember, and even now if I look through a list of titles I barely remember many of the others. I suspect this has more to do with my terrible memory than the quality of the books themselves, which I know I adored. I once read nine Goosebumps books in one day. My dad was going away for a few weeks, so I’d had the day off school so I could see him off, and so spent the whole day reading Goosebumps. The covers, though, I do remember quite well. They all had the same ‘goo’ background, in garish colours, and with raised bits so they were a bit more gross. A striking illustration was always in the middle of the cover for each individual story. I remember the publishers ran a competition to design the cover for The Barking Ghost, which I entered, and frankly my design was much better than what they finally used (except for maybe the fact that I couldn’t really draw all that well). Although it was a long while before I got into horror proper, and in all honesty I still haven’t read all that much horror literature, I do think that Goosebumps set me up well.

On the whole, though, my tastes when I was younger were, shall we say, a bit more conventional. I did however, often and increasingly dip my toes into the world of nerdery and that allowed more frequent exposure to horrific(ish) content.

Perhaps my slow start in horror had a lot to do with the fact that I was a massive wimp. In some regards, I still am, but some of the things that frightened me when I was younger, as outlined here, are just plain embarrassing. Some of my esteemed colleagues at BaH were reading Poe at a young age, and then there was me, cacking bricks reading Sweet Valley High: The Christmas Ghost.*

I have it on good authority that Disney’s Snow White terrified me when I was tiny. Not so much the actually scary bit, where Snow White first gets lost in the woods, either, but it was just the Wicked Witch in her old lady guise. Now, I confess I don’t directly remember Snow White scaring me, but I’m told it had to be switched off on various occasions. Now, Disney films can indeed be quite scary, so I’m not too ashamed of this one. The Disney film that most definitely scared me the most, though, was Fantasia. I’m a very big fan of Fantasia. It’s no doubt got some hand in my persistent love of classical music. In fact, I still think that the concluding Night on Bare Mountain segment of the film is a really effective bit of spooky animation. It took me a long time to get that far into the film as it was the Rite of Spring section which scared me silly. No, not the extinction of the dinosaurs, their various forms wiped from the face of the Earth, but the bit where the T-Rex hunts the other dinosaurs and then kills the poor Stegosaurus. I was big fan of dinosaurs when I was little (who wasn’t?), so eventually I got over my overuse of the fast-forward button and confronted the full horror of planet-wide extinction. It goes to show the effectiveness of that film, though – as a fan of the Rite of Spring both as a piece of music and as a dance work, the dinosaurs’ dance of death was a wonderful adaptation of it. Skip forward several years and I sat, completely enraptured, if not so much scared, watching Jurassic Park, a sandwich forgotten in my hand, but massive fingerprints left in the bread from my enthralled death grip.

Although by my early teens I had become a full-blown TV nerd (yes, one of those ones), before The X-Files ever got half a chance to scare me silly (more on that later), it was Strange But True that left me quivering behind a cushion. Generally, I know I really enjoyed the programme. I remember one episode which included an account of a haunted hotel of some sort, and a woman hearing footsteps on stonework out in the corridor, only to later realise the corridor was completely carpeted. Shudder. The episode I remember having to have switched off, though, was one about poltergeist recordings and white noise. NOPE. To this day, such recordings scare me silly.

Before becoming a horror fan I was most definitely a sci-fi geek. The main reasons for this were Star Trek and The X-Files. Before I became a fan of The X-Files proper, though, I would occasionally catch the odd episode when it aired on the BBC. One episode in particular freaked me out, namely Detour from season 5. In it, Mulder and Scully get lost in the woods while investigating a murder, and find themselves hunted by mothmen, who have glowing red eyes and damn good camouflage. I watched this episode with a friend from school, and after the episode my dad drove us to take her back home. Being the joker that he is, he proceeded to pretend the car broke down. Now, in a built up area this might not have been effective, but on a pitch black Welsh B-road, when the car slows down and the lights go off, it’s a bit bloody scary. Luckily, I knew he was joking quite quickly. Probably for the best, otherwise I might have been a bit more traumatised by the prank. The episode remains effective, and one of my favourites, and provided the inspiration for my current internet pseudonym, thanks to one Agent Carla Stonecypher. You might wonder how the heck Star Trek managed to scare me, but it did. It was one of the films, First Contact, that did it. The Borg. The Borg! I’m not sure I’d seen The Borg on the TV show prior to seeing the film, but they did scare me so much that I had to ask for all the lights to be switched on upstairs before I’d willingly venture up to bed. You know. In case there were cyborg aliens up there wanting to assimilate me.

Luckily, by the time I hit my teens and started watching stuff like The X-Files and had, you know, teenage friends, I did start watching a few actual horror films. I distinctly remember me and friends from school sitting around my little TV/VHS combo in my room and watching Final Destination and The Bone Collector (!) and jumping out of our skins. I wasn’t quite ready for the big boys, though, as I remember a friend and I switching off Halloween, of all things, when we were having a sleep over at her house, because it looked far too scary. Quite right, too.

I think I can identify some turning points in my relationship with horror. When Channel 4 broadcast the now-certified The Exorcist in 2001, I wanted to see it, and my parents agreed to let me watch it so long as we recorded it and watched it together during the day time. Fine, I was 14 by then, but it didn’t scare me too much, and if anything I remember being impressed rather than frightened. I went to the cinema to see the director’s cut of Alien when that happened in 2003, and a friend lent me Blade on VHS. I was well-behaved, see, and still got my parents’ permission to watch it, as it was an 18, and I was not. My reasoning was that I could hardly go back to school and say I didn’t watch it because my parents wouldn’t let me now, could I? Perhaps the greatest turning point of all was my instant love for The Silence of the Lambs. I can’t remember when it was I watched the film, but I loved it, and that Hannibal Lecter fast became one of my favourite characters. This was helped along by all the hype around the release of Hannibal in 2001 (which I didn’t actually watch until much later, and to hell with you all, I really like it).

It wasn’t until several years later, and the very first Abertoir Horror Festival, that my love for the genre really cemented itself, but even though my childhood was not one filled with classic horror literature and illicit film viewings, I think it’s easy to see where some seeds were sown for what would come.

*For the record, though, I’m pretty certain that was the only SVH book I ever read, and I’m not even sure it was that particular Super Chiller that freaked me out so much, but the cover seems familiar.

Childhood Terrors – of the Comic Fan

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Svetlana Fedotov

When I was a kid, I used to go to a day camp during the summer. It was your standard affair with plenty of crafts, nature exploration, weird camp food, and the best swimming pool in the tri-cities. Of course, like any good camp, we had plenty of urban legends to keep the children from wandering off on their own, like the Monster of the Lake. Rumor had it that a monster made out of gunk and slime would snatch children that wandered too close to the lake and drag them in, never to be seen again! Logically, that just didn’t make sense, especially after the counselors told us that a perfectly good couch that sat in our rec center came from the depths of the monster’s lake, but you find me a kid that sat on that couch and I’d show you a kid with no fear. We were terrified of that damn couch. I suppose it was that kind of irrational fear that really fed my love of horror.

I feel as the comic reporter of Brutal As Hell I should tell you about a horror comic that unnerved me as a kid; one that I read in the middle of the night, like those 50s kids reading Creepy that forced me to sleep with the lights on, but it wouldn’t be true. I didn’t actually get into comics until I was fully swinging into boy-obsessed puberty, dreaming of JNCO pants and Marilyn Manson, but that’s a story for another day. My first experience with horror was like a lot of kids in the US: Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark. Now, I knew what horror was, don’t get me wrong. I knew about Freddy and Chucky and that weird, floating hand on the cover of the movie House and boy, was I terrified. I had a wild imagination and could just as easily imagine those guys lurking in my living room TV just as well as them lurking in my bedroom, watching me sleep. But Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark was a whole another experience.

The great thing about those two series is that they were specifically aimed at kids. They weren’t super serious about putting the fear of God in their young audience (unlike that unholy Stories to Tell in the Dark), but mostly they existed to entertain as well to spook. That’s not to say that there weren’t genuinely terrifying moments, such as the red ghost in the pool episode of AYAOTD. In fact, I’m sure I’m still scared of dripping, bloody skeletons reaching for me from the bottom of the pool while I float there at the mercy of the water (well, that and the chick from The Ring.) Goosebumps, as well, was a nice little introduction to the larger fandom of terror. Looking back on it now, its super cheesy and pretty low key on the horror, but it was effective. Hell, if my day job as a library assistant proves anything, is that it’s still as popular now as it ever was.

Despite any successful attempt into terrifying me to turn on all the lights in the house as I crept to the bathroom in the middle of the night, it really wouldn’t be until I got into comic books did I really embrace the potential of horror. As stated, by then, I wasn’t so much as a kid and I wasn’t as easily tricked into believing in monsters under my bed. Also, I’m sure I was a gross teenager. The point is, my childhood horror experiences were pretty boring. I rolled with the thrill of word-of-mouth urban legends and watched a thirty minute show every Saturday night and that was really about it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got some Beanie Babies to dig up and a Hanson tape to dance to…

DVD Review: Baby Love (1968)

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

If there was ever a film that could never be made today, then the British family drama and warped coming-of-age tale Baby Love is it. No bloody way. Whilst we have developed ever-stronger stomachs for all manner of fare in cinema since this film was made, back in the tail-end of the 60s – we frequently yawn through scenes of violence, torture, bloodshed and psychological torment – what we can no longer tolerate today is any intimation of sexuality in the under-16s, as the lead actress genuinely was at the time of filming, and as her character is during the story. Indeed, we have of late seen some very high-profile cases whereby people now are punished for sexual crimes which sometimes occurred around the time that this film was being made, and with girls who were Luci’s age. It’s impossible to see things in a vacuum, and we’re all the products of our own social climates – so with due warning, Baby Love will make for uncomfortable viewing for many twenty-first century audiences. That said, if you can remember that this film is the better part of fifty years old, then perhaps you can accept its own social climate (which is obliquely criticised) and see it for what it is: a decent slow-burn drama, with some excellent performances – not least from Linda ‘Angel Blake’ Hayden, here appearing in her first-ever feature role and, to be fair, owning this film at every stage, both because and despite of her young years.

So, we begin things in a run-down corner of urban 60s Britain; Luci (Hayden) is a bit of a young tearaway, hitching up her skirts, kissing the boys and thieving (or trying to). Her life seems set on a pretty tough course as it is, given her surroundings, but upon discovering the suicide of her mother (a cameo by Diana Dors), Luci is orphaned. She’s not the only one grieving her mum, though. It seems she had written to an old flame of hers – a doctor named Robert (Keith Barron), who was supporting her financially, unbeknownst to his wife. In her last letter, she begged him to take care of her daughter. He acquiesces – who wouldn’t feel sorry for a child in her place? So, he goes to collect her.

At first, Luci is overwhelmed by her new, luxurious surroundings – which are a far cry from the old industrial workers’ terraces and scrub land she’s known so far. Being a teenager though, she quickly begins to feel very comfortable, thank you, and as the old saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. Unable to draw Robert out on his past relationship with her mother and clearly blaming him for their isolated, impoverished lives, Luci can’t help but worsen the cracks she finds in his marriage to Amy (Anne Lynn), whilst leading their son Nick into a confusing, heated flirtation. She behaves the way a lot of unhappy people do, only it’s amplified into a particular energy by her age and her life experiences; she’s clearly disturbed, and her nightmares (which are as close as this film gets to horror, though they’re rather effective) tell of a problematic relationship with her mother even before things went so wrong. But does Luci have a malevolent streak, or is she just a kid – a kid on the threshold of adulthood; is she vulnerable, or is it part of the act?

The jury’s out on that one, but what’s beyond doubt is that this film, made a clear three years before the seminal Blood on Satan’s Claw which made her into a cult horror actress, mind, provides clear evidence of Linda Hayden’s acting chops. It’s a pretty demanding and complex role that’s being asked of her here, and although I’m guessing she was meant to have a working-class accent (she doesn’t quite manage that one) she delivers an effective performance as Luci, maintaining ambiguity even when you’ve seen her smirk at some mayhem she’s caused. It’s never fully clear whether her behaviour is just an ill-thought-out kind of self-preservation, or whether she’s more unhinged than that. At least, one thing seems certain, and that’s that her burgeoning sexuality is both an asset and a curse to her. On one hand, she clearly uses it to see what will happen, in a kind of mischief-making sport. On the other, it places her in danger on several occasions – and the way men leer at her, paw at her and even threaten far worse is more than enough to raise an eyebrow. I mean, for god’s sake – British comedy mainstay Dick Emery is one of the cast members doing the dirty old man routine! It’s not exactly fun to watch, and although director Alastair Reid evidently wanted us to see this kind of behaviour as unpleasant or at least problematic, it also assumes a lot of things are quite normal when we’re hardwired not to find them so; there is a fair amount of partial nudity, for instance, and even retrospectively this sort of thing is a hot topic when the actresses are known to have been so young. There are a few wince-worthy scenes in other respects too, although this does not a film review make…

So, aside from all of this, is Baby Love a good film? I’d say it’s decent. Not a world-beater, and it derives a lot of its interest from what I’d call the ‘time capsule’ effect, providing an interesting and stylish snapshot of a Britain that’s long gone, but it manages a reasonable level of building tension; supporting Hayden, Lynn is good as the nervy, overlooked Amy, and although she’s only in the film in moments of flashback or nightmare, Dors packs a fair amount of presence into proceedings. Less effective, though, is Dr. Robert himself. Although Barron is a good actor (with an ongoing CV you could wallpaper your house with), he isn’t used to great effect here really considering he’s a lynchpin of the plot. He’s generally to be seen barking orders at the women of the house and little else; perhaps this is the point, but it would have been good to see him do more, especially as some of his more fraught scenes with Hayden had a lot of potential. Essentially, when…if you accept the sexualised content on its own terms (and whatever you might infer, it shows very little), Baby Love is a pretty low-key tale of family implosion, well-made and rather effective. It’s definitely very worthwhile as an early vehicle for its star Hayden – and as different as the two films may be, it actually foreshadows a couple of scenes from The Blood on Satan’s Claw in terms of dialogue and content.

Baby Love will be released by Network on 26th January 2015.

Childhood Terrors – ‘Sugar and spice and all things nice’: Misty Comics and Horror for Girls (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

What got you into horror as a child? Most of us can chart our love of the genre back to our early years, and we can probably identify one or two fundamental fandoms that set us along our own individual paths into darkness. While horror cinema almost inevitably takes centre stage, back in the days when it was tough to track down the movies which tantalised us so by reputation – or via equally tantalising stills in books and magazines – the hungry nascent horror fan had to make the most of the other resources available to him. Or indeed her… Comics offered just such an opportunity: they were cheap, easy to find, and – despite a general downturn starting in the 70s – still prolific, in a broad range of genres to suit most adolescent tastes. Not least, of course, horror. Yet it would still surprise many to learn that a British title existed, aimed at teen and pre-teen girls, which thrived by thrilling its readers with tales of mystery and horror. Welcome to the world of the Misty comic.

Misty first appeared back in 1978, brought to the stands by esteemed children’s publishing house Egmont. The comic ran weekly until 1980, when it underwent a merger with another girls’ comic, the more traditional Tammy, which meant a gradual decline in the horror focus over the following years. But there was enough of the Misty content to generate a series of dedicated holiday specials and annuals – which is how I first encountered the publication. The year was 1986, and I received the last Misty annual as a Christmas present. Needless to say, I was hooked. I can credit Misty with introducing me to the delights of scary fiction, the London Dungeon, Edgar Allan Poe, and Vincent Price, to name but a few. My early education in horror had begun, initiated by a comic which dealt nearly exclusively with female characters and female perspectives – albeit refracted through tales of the supernatural, some of which had the real potential to terrify…

‘Welcome To My Midnight World’

Misty wasn’t just the name of the publication, but also a character in the comic, with her own mythology and her own followers and fans. Reading something like an allegory, albeit one which wasn’t very strongly delineated, our timeless, ageless ‘gatherer of stories’ existed in a ‘Cavern of Dreams’ near to a ‘Pool of Life’. From time to time the publication featured letters in which readers asked questions about her domain, where and what she was (the 1982 annual featured a long Q&A with the character, for instance). Misty didn’t feature as a character in the stories, however, but operated more as a horror hostess – introducing the stories to follow, and sometimes commenting on their conclusions. Upon reflection, Misty’s appearance was at least as significant to the character’s impact upon her fans as anything she might have said or done in the comic. The Misty aesthetic was anything but conventional, particularly for a mainstream girls’ magazine of its day, and it must surely have had an influence on her readers. It definitely did on this writer.

With long, dark hair, alabaster skin, a flowing pale gown and even a pentacle necklace, Misty’s appearance recalls several possible influences. One of these must be classic horror (although in keeping with the medium and the target age group, Misty was more of a benevolent supernatural creature). You can see something of Carol Borland’s character Luna Mora in her looks, right down to the heavily-lined eyes and flowing hair. Borland played Luna opposite Bela Lugosi’s Count Mora in the 1934 film Mark of the Vampire, in the process becoming the prototypical Gothic vamp. There’s also something of the inimitable aesthetics of Hammer horror there too. Hammer’s period Gothic had become part of the fabric of British pop culture in the mid-20th century, and Misty no doubt owed something to the studio’s stable of glamorous Gothic leading ladies. The image of her ghostly figure, swathed in a shroud-white gown, beneath a full moon and the silhouette of a bat is pure Hammer. Also significant in establishing the look and atmosphere of both Misty and her comic were the Gothic Romance novels that had reached a peak in popularity in preceding decades. Seldom offering more than a hint of the supernatural, these pulp paperbacks aimed at a female readership featured damsels in distress in grandiose, if gloomy historical settings, with dark, Byronic anti-heroes ready to sweep the heroine off her feet against a backdrop of thrilling mystery. While the romance element took a backseat in Misty (boy-meets-girl storylines usually concluded with the ghostly twist that one partner was dead) the comic clearly took a few stylistic pointers from the Gothic Romances issued by publishers like the Paperback Library’s Gothic imprint in the 1960s and 70s.

Another possible influence on Misty from the same era might be the flood of lurid occult pulp paperbacks and magazines, themselves informed by the occult revival of the late sixties and the rage for all things weird and ‘witchy’. The interplay between the Age of Aquarius and the mainstream had generated a new and recognisable look for the modern witch – young, enigmatic and darkly beautiful – a sexy collision between hippy mysticism and creepy cuteness. This hip 20th century sorceress duly found her place on many of the covers of the countless books and periodicals which flooded the market. Right down to her necklace, Misty appears to owe a great deal to this phenomenon, as well as to the vogue for supernatural goings-on and their representations in pop culture, a well-established phenomenon by the time the comic appeared. Yet, as much as its heroine had an almost hip look, there was a strong streak of conservatism at the heart of the comic itself. Unlike the comic’s titular heroine, the sympathetic characters in the stories tended to be conventionally pretty ‘straights’, whilst most of Misty’s villainesses tended towards the witchy look.

The infamously bloodthirsty Countess Bathory herself even makes an appearance in one issue, looking incredibly proto-Gothic, all raven hair and kohl eyes, not unlike a certain singer named Siouxsie. Misty’s run coincides with the rise and fall of the original Gothic Punk movement in the UK. The term ‘Gothic’ was coined in reference to the bands Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Bauhaus just a year after the first issue of Misty hit the news-stands. By the time the title was fully extinct in 1986, Goth had fallen out of favour with trendsetters. Of course, Misty catered to a very different audience than the fishnet-and-eyeliner aficionados buying Bauhaus records, but Goth drew from many of the same pop culture inspirations as the teen comic, exploiting perhaps similar dark and morbid fascinations. But if the Gothic Punks thought their music was selling subversion, Misty’s publishers certainly didn’t see their spooky stories in that light.

That conservatism suggested by the dress of the title’s heroines found expression in the stories. Misty offered a moralistic species of the supernatural: although the tales were fantastical, they were often fables which warned against selfish behaviour, and the inevitable punishment was made to fit the crime. While a million miles away from the infamous EC horror comics of the 1950s in terms of graphic gore and gleeful ghoulishness, Misty shared their relish for poetic justice. While they were being playfully spooked, Misty’s young readers were also being shown how to behave. In ‘The Green China Man’, a spoiled young girl called Tina Swanson finds herself drawn to a strange antique ceramic figure, one which seems to have the power to literally grant her every wish. She uses this to her own advantage, until she decides to condemn a school-friend to “get lost” and an unfortunate echo bounces this message back at her. Only the accidental destruction of the green china man allows her to return, and to atone for her behaviour, of course. Idols and strange artefacts usually spelled trouble, as did strange mirrors, which featured a lot in the comic. Such magic props were usually employed to demonstrate that you should be careful what you wish for, and that appearances can be deceptive. Too much vanity is inevitably rewarded with hardship.

Also frequently in the firing line in Misty stories are greed, duplicity and cruelty: ‘Mountain Girl’ tells the tale of a girl and her grandfather who have the uncanny ability to make abundant crops grow near their isolated woodland home, despite the relative poverty of their nearest neighbours. When residents of the nearby town find out about this, they demand their presence in the town so that they can benefit from their strange powers and generate wealth for themselves. However, their cruel treatment of their unwitting guests leads to the girl taking a violent revenge on the town, because her ability to control nature extends to causing earthquakes. Often, when strange, supernatural powers stem from the protagonists of the story, we witness the heroine having to decide whether to use her powers for good or for evil. The text story titled ‘The Takeover’ reads like a parable against envy. A girl called Louise has the ability to replicate the traits of others. When she employs it to supplant the talents of her kind-meaning sports mentor Miranda, it leads to a grisly comeuppance when Miranda falls ill. One of the most popular Misty stories was a lengthy serial called ‘Moonchild’. The main character in the series, Rosemary Black, discovers she has the powers of telekinesis, linked to a crescent-moon shaped birthmark underneath her hairline. She has inherited these powers from her maternal grandmother, but Rosemary’s mother has spent many years trying to keep her strange offspring as low and subdued as possible in an attempt to head off the arrival of any strange abilities. Yet, rather like in the classic horror movie Carrie, it proves to no avail, leaving Rosemary to decide how to use her telekinesis. Can she resist the temptation to use it against a group of school bullies who are making her life hell?…

Although many of Misty’s stories took place in contemporary Britain, the comic commissioned a significant number of stories which took place in the more distant past, usually, though not exclusively (and again, rather like many of Hammer’s horror films) at some point after the turn of the Nineteenth Century, though up until the first decades of the Twentieth. Often, these stories have obvious precedents in classic literature – and definitely show an awareness of sensation fiction, which was perhaps the comic’s equivalent in earlier times. For instance, ‘The Weird Sisters’ (1981) with its discussion of female insanity and treatment in Victorian England has echoes of the novels of Wilkie Collins, particularly The Woman in White. ‘Strange Heritage’, with its Yorkshire setting and themes of thwarted love, bears some resemblance to Wuthering Heights, albeit with a bang-up-to-date message about the importance of nature conservation (!) Yet as well as using period settings in its pages, Misty also devoted space to excerpts from classic literature itself.

One of the most ghastly of these – and perhaps most surprising, given the age of the readers – was an excerpt from M. G. Lewis’s notorious work of Gothic excess The Monk. (In a 1796 review, the poet Coleridge observed that ‘the Monk is a romance, which if a parent saw in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale’!) The excerpt included in Misty is a poem from the novel entitled ‘Alonzo the Brave and fair Imogene’. This tale of chivalric love between a Crusading knight and his lady gives way to horror, as Alonzo takes Imogene at her word when she declares that, should she ever love another, he must attend her wedding feast in ghostly form, and ‘bear [her] away to the grave’. The description of Alonzo’s unvizored visage riddled with worms has retained its power to disturb, and doubtlessly would have had an impact upon its young readers. Keeping company with the ghastly Alonzo and Imogene (or Imogine, as spelled in the original) through the course of Misty’s existence were diverse examples of literature by writers like Wordsworth and Poe, alongside tales of Ancient Greece, Arthurian legends, and suchlike. It’s an impressive introduction to writing which might not otherwise have found its way into the reading habits of pre-teens. In addition, many girls would have their first history lesson on subjects like the Borgias here, as well as finding articles about alleged real-life hauntings and other spooky locales.

Better than Bunty, eh?

For the second part of Keri’s feature, click here…

Welcome to Childhood Terrors!

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

It’s been some time since we’ve run a series of special features here at Brutal as Hell; those of you who have been reading for a few years may remember that it used to be a reasonably regular occurrence – and so now, for the first time in a while, as the nights are at their coldest and darkest, we pause to take a look back, to think about where our love for this genre came from, and why it turned into something so important in our lives that it’s become part of our make-up as adults. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Childhood Terrors – a set of articles and special features which will be unashamedly personal in nature, because they’re all about our own nostalgia, our own favourites and our own key influences.

Horror is one of those genres which, for the most part, boasts a long-lasting affection from its fans, and is often linked to some of our keenest early memories. There are of course many reasons why this comes to be, but certainly, children seem to be drawn towards what scares them. Daring themselves to reach down the scary book from the bookshelf…turning to the page which they remember, yet fear…or avoiding the frightening film, or the daunting character, whilst all the same asking a million questions about it and mythologising it in their own ways, as I did myself with a film which has a cherished place in my adult life now. Horror provides the first real love-hate relationship for a lot of us, way before it cements into a personal passion in adulthood.

Certainly, although child-friendly horror has long existed, for many of us as horror fans (particularly those of us who are a bit older), our first and most formative scares probably derived from things which we just plain should not have seen. I will forever remember the rare thrill of sneaking a peek at even a few moments of films being watched by my parents, and the aftermath of bad dreams which they caused; the dream sequence at the end of Carrie, where her hand darts out of the ground…the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London…hell, it’s not even horror as such, but some scenes from Troll fascinated and terrified me (and it’s a real sadness to revisit such scenes in adulthood and see that the intervening years have stripped them of their magic, even if it means their power to scare, too).

But did all of this do me any real harm, I wonder? Did it any of us? Bad dreams are one thing, but even the briefest contact I had with horror at a young age fuelled my imagination like nothing else: things that actively scared me prompted flights of fancy, childish art projects, stories, and a definite learning curve, as strange as that may sound. My growing love of the genre definitely developed my reading skills, too, as I sought out ever more challenging and memorable books and comics. If I saw a picture which grabbed me, then I wanted the necessary reading ability to find out everything I could about it. In effect, I wanted to be scared – because it also meant escapism, creativity, growth and change. Those of us who have stuck with horror may, like I do, always feel like they’re chasing that thrill of fear, trying to get it back again. Ultimately too, I knew it was fiction; horror provided many kids with a safe space to experience a whole host of emotions and ideas which couldn’t cause us material harm, whatever the powers-that-be said.

With all of this in mind, I can’t help but wonder if modern society’s well-meaning attempts to cocoon children from seeing anything which might alarm them might, in effect, be starving them of the kinds of imaginative lives that many of us had. I used to work in daycare (yeah, laugh it up) and I remember getting a warning that reading through ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ might be too much for some of the little darlings, and they didn’t want parents to complain, after all. If you know the book, you might well be as perplexed as I was. On a more serious note, last week many of you will have read about the substitute teacher in the US who has been found guilty of ‘disseminating matter harmful to juveniles’; just what was going through Sheila Kearns’ mind when she decided to play the anthology horror movie ABCs of Death to several classes we can only imagine, and certainly, her actions were complacent at their absolute best, but the fact that she has wound up in court over it, when you’d assume her 14-18 year-old charges would have accessed far, far worse in their time, seems to set a worrying precedent. Won’t someone please think of the children? I’m not suggesting that kids of all ages should be parked in front of any and all horror films, of course. But any insinuation that fiction on-screen can really cause ‘harm’ sets my teeth on edge somewhat, because – haven’t we been here before?

Many of us found quite enough scares as children, however, whether they were intended, or very much not intended for kids’ consumption; many of us found horror where it was never even intended to be at all, come to that, getting creeped out by things which screened way before the watershed, shows and films deemed suitable for family entertainment. We all once found our scares in a wide range of sources, regardless, and the articles which will make up Childhood Terrors are our affectionate celebration of these. I hope you’ll enjoy our trip down Memory Lane; just don’t look behind you…

DVD Review: Dead Snow 2 – Red vs. Dead

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Ah, Nazis. There’s a definite fascination with the Nazis in modern/trash culture, and in horror movies they turn up with perplexing regularity; maybe it’s because they were our foes, maybe we feel most comfortable playing out fantasy scenarios which involve them because we feel safe to mock those whom we beat – or maybe it’s the smart uniforms, but in any case, they crop up an awful lot, whereas the Soviets – who threatened us with worse than even blitzkreig – rarely appear. Well, whatever the reasoning there, you can’t deny that undead Nazis make for fun films, and Dead Snow 2, like the first film, knows just how to play it: picking up right where the first one left off, with the escape of the last survivor of the cabin, Martin, thereby quickly setting the tone for the madcap movie to follow.

Martin manages to make it to a nearby town and seeks medical help but, perhaps unsurprisingly, he finds himself in the frame for what has happened. The bodies of his friends have all been recovered, and as such, Martin winds up handcuffed to his hospital bed. Things are not looking good for him…especially when it turns out that the well-meaning doctors have found the severed arm of the mean, reanimated Einsatz commander General Herzog – and attached it to him. Anyway, Martin assumes – or rather hopes – that the Nazis have been beaten. After all, they were after their gold, right? Nothing else? How wrong he is. Not only are the Nazis still around, but they’re on the move, and even seeking new conscripts. Via the use of his new arm, which boasts super-human strength (and contributes to some hilarious scenes as a consequence), Martin manages to escape, and concentrates his efforts on finding out where the division are going. Luckily, it turns out that some self-styled internet zombie specialists have been following the case – and they’re coming to help…

Dead Snow 2 balances an awareness of itself and its place in a burgeoning horror genre with its sparky elements of creativity perfectly; although, as with the first film, it pitches in the odd quote here or the fan reference there, it never feels like it’s trying too hard or desperately wants to belong. It just works, it feels genuine, and more than this, some of its most memorable scenes come from its clear links to genre classics – the way it takes an idea and runs with it, turning it into something novel. The reanimated arm element, for example, seems to my mind to be a clear nod to Sam Raimi (as with lots of the film’s visual gags) but because the film goes so incredibly overboard with it, it’s definitely out there on its own. This is also a film which is pretty merciless in its plentiful splatter, and everybody gets it irrespective of age or gender or anything else; the effect of this was to have me laughing out loud a lot of the time, often because I just couldn’t believe who they’d just killed and how. The film has a huge sense of humour, lots of physical jerks and a whole host of ingenious, graphic kills which boast spot-on comedic timing. Its tone is playful and as a Saturday night movie, it really works well.

Despite the ubiquitous ‘let’s make a remake/sequel and add American characters in order for it to be a success’ schtick, the ‘Zombie Squad’ who turn up to help out aren’t the cavalry we might be expecting. Sure, they help, but they’re mocked pretty hard (as is everyone present) with director Tommy Wirkola having some fun picking over American preconceptions of Norway, and vice versa; their arrival is played for laughs, albeit not unduly mean-spirited, and it still feels very much like a Norwegian film – for which I’m very grateful. I’m also grateful for the fact that our lead character, Martin (Vegar Hoel) is a regular-seeming guy, not a 6′ speak-your-weight machine with impressive dental veneers or a bloody Final Girl. The film is stronger for its characters being, well, frankly a bit shit in a crisis. And as for the zombies themselves, due to the interesting spin on the zombie genre we get here (where they have more in common with ideas of vengeful ghosts than your conventional mindless flesh-biters) they come across as real characters, despite having more or less no dialogue, some perfectly-pitched one-liners aside. Although we’re not meant to root for them, I couldn’t help give a little inward whoop of joy every time Herzog and his men appeared on screen, because let’s be fair – they owned it.

Dead Snow 2 is a joy to behold, frankly, if you like your horror gory with lots of black comedy throughout. You won’t get any profound messages about World War II or the Occupation here, or at least I didn’t, but you will get characters of every stripe being sent up relentlessly and in good style. (Oh, and you know that thing I said about how the Soviets never get an airing in horror? No more. And it’s fucking glorious.)

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead is available on DVD and Blu-ray now from Entertainment One.

The Colours of Horror: Bad Science and Unnatural Nasties in 80s Cinema

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Since the widespread colourisation of film replaced black and white as the go-to format for popular cinema, horror movies have frequently led the charge when it comes to the most creative use of colour palletes, special FX and lighting. It’s something of a myth, a myth which persists, that horror always takes place in the shadows; sure, we’ve always had great examples of less-as-more giving us good films, but many of the most memorable horrors have been choc-full of different gaudy hues – elaborate make-up rendered in unnatural detail, hosts of garish grotesques and lashings of Kensington gore. Just consider Roger Corman’s Masque of the Red Death – the whole spectrum comes into play, with fantastic effects.

However, as fascinating as the rise and rise of technicolour terrors is (and this may well be a subject for another time), I’d like to set the clock to 1980 – the beginning of the decade where I grew up, and the period of time when so many of my favourite lurid horrors took on a look all of their own. We can start with one of the most game-changing visual experiences to ever grace our screens, and to my mind, the film which set the bar for a new, popular pallete. I’m talking of course about Dario Argento’s Inferno. Although other films of this year made some good use of the new colour scheme, such as The Boogeyman with its brightly-coloured lighting in key scenes, to me it is Inferno which takes the prize for utterly drenching its characters in certain bright colours – blue and pink, primarily. These colours began to take on a fun, recognisable significance of their own, with others adding to the popular range before long; Inferno, with its beautiful cinematography and a director who had steadily built a reputation for his formidable use of aesthetics, was the start of the new wave.

Argento was, by the time 1980 came around, no stranger to the importance of colour, and his stand-out work, Suspiria (1977) looks almost painterly: key scenes are flooded with washes of coloured light, and the end result is a pretty overwhelming sensory experience. However, in terms of style, Suspiria was all about the primary colours – red, in particular, being used to imbue the interiors of the dance academy and keying in to all the associated properties of alarm, danger, even blood. Suspiria is a horror film of the 1970s, and it looks in every way the part. Argento carried on with the stylistic choice to flood his horror with colour in Inferno, but here he changes the colours he uses, heralding something new in the process.

Moving away from the use of primary colours (with the exception of the rather royal blue lighting used), the new colours-for-strangeness were modern and different to what had come before, perhaps also reflecting the fashions of the day: bright colours were widespread and trendy at this time, after all. Developing technologies also allowed more scope for adding neon-coloured SFX to films in post-production, too, further widening the array of possibilities – but a select set of horror films and directors really turned this potential to particular effects – using these modern, bright, unnatural hues to tie in with their fantastical plots, even becoming part and parcel of the strange goings-on.

In Re Animator (1985), Stuart Gordon’s madcap, grisly spin on the HP Lovecraft short story Herbert West: Re-animator, we see West (genre film god Jeffrey Combs) working on a serum which will reanimate (natch) dead flesh – with grotesque, but hilarious consequences. West’s ‘re-agent’ – capable of overthrowing the natural order by conquering death – is emblematic of bad science, and all of the fears and anxieties people have about science refracted into one blackly comedic substance. It is as such an unnatural, luminous green. Luminous green as code for ‘sinister substance’ has endured, too: as recently as 2007, more than twenty years after the re-agent, the zombie movie with a twist Wasting Away colourised its own sinister substance the same bright colour – the only colour, as most of the scenes are entirely black and white.

‘Bad science’ on screen, as seen throughout the rest of the horror decade, has seen some other notable uses of madcap colour – and one of my absolute favourites is also a horror-comedy spin on Lovecraft, from the same director as Re Animator, no less. This time, though, the film is From Beyond, and Gordon represents the nefarious experiments of Dr. Edward Pretorius, and his inter-dimensional gateway machine the Resonator, with a palate of shockingly bright pinks and blues. The colours operate as a rather eye-catching portent of doom: right before bad things are due to happen, you get your senses hit with waves of vivid, incongruous colour.

(The apex of madcap horror-science though, for me, probably occurs right at the turn of the decade with Frank Henenlotter’s touching tale of boy meets girl, boy accidentally dismembers girl with lawnmower, boy reconstructs girl with an assortment of hooker body parts after blowing a whole host of them up with explosive crack. Yep, Frankenhooker (1990) comes across as a glorious hurrah for a decade of demented experiments: the reanimation scene here, which is an update of a horror staple seen in numerous Frankenstein movies, uses an eye-popping range of colours, neatly combining our luminous pinks, greens and blues into one scene.)

Going back to the 80s, though, we can see these pinks, greens and blues being put to other uses, exploring different aspects of cinematic strangeness. Richard Wenks’ oh-so 80s Vamp (1986) has another way of hurling modern society into disarray – this time, through the exploration of the supernatural, where ultra-old meets very-new. Our protagonists are your standard Frat boys out on a pledge (and for some this might be horror enough) but when they find themselves in the After Dark Club on the look-out for a stripper, it turns out that the staff there are none other than bloodsucking vampires, with their star girl, Katrina (Grace Jones) the head of the group. Her bizarre key scene – pure 80s, partly erotic and partly unsettling – defines the look of this film perfectly, placing an ancient being smack-bang up to date in terms of the aesthetics put in place, and her transformation scenes are bathed in the same colours too, conflating her performance with her predatory nature. Jones looks striking enough under her own steam, and so here she looks pretty remarkable.

Whilst you could look for, and find, a bit of social critique in Vamp if you saw fit (certainly the self-assurance of some self-satisfied frat kids takes a hell of a knock), there’s definitely more to be had in a film of the following year – one which is equally viewed through an array of vivid shades. Jim Muro’s Street Trash (1987) looks at the effects of a noxious substance which finds its way into the human food chain – well, into low-grade alcohol actually, where it has a horrific effect on a group of people who already have it bad enough, being down-and-outs on the streets of New York. A new drink – Viper – hits the shelves, and it has a horrible, albeit incredibly lurid, effect on the people who drink it. Right there, on the streets of one of the world’s most iconic cities, these people literally dissolve into a dew – or else, a torrent of blues, greens and pinks, an absolute explosion of the spectrum and a grisly death…

As a cartoonish horror movie, Street Trash isn’t exactly meant to be a political statement, but along the way you can’t help but see it as a spit in the face of the American Dream, particularly in its incredibly mercenary 80s phase. (The same could be said of C.H.U.D. made a few years before, which, although rather less garish, also spins its narrative around the plight of the urban homeless, here extending the demonisation of the homeless all the way to their literal transformation into monsters.)

The last film I’d like to talk about here is another Henenlotter; this is a director who liked to push the envelope, and found a host of ways to do this on screen; in this movie, psychoactives and addiction are given the Henenlotter treatment, all via a little parasitic critter known as an Aylmer (something which prompts the Aylmer’s unwitting host, Brian, to exclaim “Elmer? You fucking called it Elmer?”) An absurd and fantastic genre film, Brain Damage (1988) is many things – monster movie, trip movie, camp gore fest and body horror. As Brian is parasitised by the crafty (and tuneful) Aylmer, which has escaped from a nearby household after years of being kept weak by a lacklustre diet, he finds that he’s getting a hefty dose of a powerful psychoactive, which makes him see and experience the world in psychedelic glory (even a car-lot can become a carnival on this stuff). Only thing is, the creature wants a bellyful of human brains in exchange, and when Brian refuses to help him get them, he withholds his narcotic ‘juice’ – sending poor Brian into hideous withdrawals. The whole escapade is trippy throughout, looking incomparably 80s, and using our pet palate to variously represent Brian’s trips, and his eventual comeuppance. It’s still an oddly eerie film to this day, both because and despite the fact that it is so firmly of its time.

And all of these films are of their time, aren’t they? Oh, of course lurid lighting and colour never went away (*cough* Gasper Noe *cough*) but skip forward to the current day, and the norm is something far, far more washed out; think of the new wave of French horrors and you think of their drained, blue-filtered aesthetic; think of the ongoing onslaught of ‘found footage’ horror and you’re lucky to get much in the way of polished cinematography at all, let alone a color palate to play with. That said, this isn’t true of the glut of faux grindhouse films we’ve seen of late; in emulating films which came before, movies like Hobo with a Shotgun picked up on a lot of the same colour usage and styles, making for fun play with a distinctive palate whilst showing that there’s a taste for this stuff out there still. The film itself ain’t perfect, but it was so good to see that look again. I suppose, for me, nostalgia makes all of this feel like home – and as much as I love modern horror, I do love the fact that these bold, eye-catching shades are finding their way to screens again. We don’t always want realism, after all – sometimes, we want a bit of sorcery, a bit of nature gone awry or a healthy dose of science-paranoia. It’s part and parcel of the magic of horror…

“Body horror is where my heart lies…” – an interview with director Andy Stewart

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

We look at quite a few short films during the course of an average year here at Brutal as Hell, what with the Horror in Short section we run, together with our combined attendance at horror festivals – but sometimes, a filmmaker’s work stands out, and that’s certainly the case with director and writer Andy Stewart, based in Glasgow. I originally featured Andy’s first film, Dysmorphia, back last year – this is still available for you to watch, and if you’re a fan of hard-hitting, though still understated body shocks, then I recommend you do so. Since then, I’ve been able to catch up to the rest of Andy’s work to date – namely, Split, and Ink – and therein I’ve seen a director crafting a recognisable style of his own, where we see an idea firmly grounded in the everyday allowed to run wild into the realms of flinch-inducing, grisly detail.

Andy was kind enough to have a chat with me about his work so far…

BAH: The first question is kind of an obvious one I know, but – how did you cross over into filmmaking? I understand you moved from writing into directing…

Andy: Yeah, I used to be a sports reporter, covering third division Scottish football games. Not the most glamorous role. In the end, I got fed up of sitting on freezing cold football terraces and decided to retire to the warmth of my house and start blogging, which I used as a means to moan about my perception of mainstream horror films. This kind of grew until I had 10 regular writers and we were reviewing screeners, interviewing actors, directors, authors and I also began writing for magazines at this time. After a while, and having sat through more awful screeners than I could stand, I decided that I wanted to have a crack at film-making and, being a massive David Cronenberg fan, started churning out short body horror scripts one after the other. Dysmorphia seemed like a good place to start but, I didn’t know any technical people to help me actually bring it to life until I was introduced to my producer, Adriana Polito, who was absolutely instrumental on Dysmorphia. She’s one of the most organised and efficient people alive. I genuinely couldn’t have done it without her.

Dysmorphia, especially considering it’s your very first film, packs a hell of a punch; it’s a very bold, very graphic take on a genuine mental condition – though the gory scenes in the film derive a lot of their impact from the fact that you find yourself feeling sympathetic for the plight of the main character. Particularly at the end, you feel that it’s a very humanised kind of horror, and certainly no splatterfest. What’s the story behind Dysmorphia?

I mostly write about things I can kind of relate to. That’s where it came from, to an extent. Obviously, I haven’t taken things to quite the extremes the main character does but I have felt kind of alone and depressed at times in my life and have been unhappy with aspects of my appearance at different times, as most of us have been. The rest kind of came from my existing knowledge of the 2 conditions that became one in the film (Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Body Integrity Identity Disorder). I have always been a bit fascinated by BIID. I have never quite been able to understand the emotions and feelings that lead a person to disassociate so completely with a part of their body as to want rid of it and I don’t suppose that I ever will. It’s a really interesting condition.

What challenges did you face putting together those special effects? I’m guessing, like most first-time filmmakers, that you had limited funds…

Yeah. That’s a fair guess. The entire film was made on a budget of £160. Ten quid of that went on the FX. I knew that I couldn’t afford to show too much, lest it look fake, so I made the decision pretty early on to go with the “less is more” approach, which I think serves the film quite well. I designed a lot of the special FX make-up in advance with Ruthy Devenny, the prosthetic FX technician. That tenner went on a slab of pork belly that I rigged with a blood tube. It’s only in one shot. The rest was all Gordie’s real arm. There were actually very, very few challenges. That side of things went quite smoothly although the room did start to get a bit whiffy from the pork and hot lights…

Judging by your work so far – Dysmorphia, Split and Ink – you clearly have an interest in body horror, and by that I don’t mean the zany kind which you’d associate with, say, Henenlotter, but a far more unflinching, unsettling variety. Is this an area you’d like to explore more in future work, and if so, do you have any ideas where you’d like to take it next?

Oh definitely. I think if you are going down the more severe body horror route of Split or Ink, it should be unflinching and should unsettle people. I am a major hypochondriac, so body horror is one of the few things that troubles me and I can’t get enough of it. I get grossed out by anything to do with fingernails and teeth. I have a few other things that I want to do, film-wise, but I will absolutely be back to body horror. Body horror is where my heart lies, I guess.

Late last year, you were a guest at Sheffield’s Celluloid Screams horror festival, where me and editor-man Ben got to catch up with your two most recent short films, ‘Split’ and ‘Ink’. What was the experience of screening two of your films at the same event like, and were you pleased with your response?

Anyone who knows me, or who saw me before the screening of either Split or Ink at Celluloid Screams, will know that I am a nervous wreck before any screenings. I hate watching my films and hate watching them with audiences. Part of me feels a bit guilty for subjecting folk to these long, quiet, often revolting films! It was weird to have the two films playing on the same day, too. The only people with more screen-time were Astron-6. That’s madness.

I was really happy with the response to both films actually, and the feedback was lovely. It’s always lovely and touching when people come up to me and say they enjoyed my work or that it elicited some kind of reaction. On the whole, Split was received better, I think. Some folk weren’t quite as taken with Ink, but that’s OK. I know where it’s lacking and that’s something for me to work on.

I have to ask this, having sat – and squirmed – through Ink. What was your thinking behind the idea? The main character covets tattoos of his own, but comes up with a horrific way of getting them…

It actually came from frustration. I have a lot of tattoos, and it’s true what they say – they are kind of addictive. I was unemployed for a while and couldn’t afford any new tattoos and so I remember sitting thinking up ways to get new ones. Crazy things. I was like, “Well, I could do my own. Prison style,” and “I could flee a tattoo studio without paying but, no, that’s illegal,”then I hit on the idea of “I could steal them from folk but, no, also illegal, and nuts”. Then I started thinking that it could work as a film and, in fact, was written at the same time as Dysmorphia. It was originally a much more slapsticky, schlocky affair, but I rewrote it to pull it in line with the tone of Dysmorphia and Split. I actually now work in a tattoo studio in Glasgow so don’t actually have to pay for my tattoos. That was also part of my reasoning behind making Ink when I did. In fact, the scene outside the studio was shot at my work and the “Tattooist” is played by an actual tattooist. The guy were all really supportive.

So far, you’ve made three short films. Given the success of the ABCs of Death compilations, it seems like the horror-viewing public is rediscovering a taste for short movies…this is partly behind our thinking at the site with the Horror in Short section; it seems such a shame to overlook good short films, so we aim to make them available for our readers. What do you personally most enjoy about the medium? And are you interested in moving into feature-length filmmaking?

For me, short film-making has helped me start to find my style, if you like, and I have had to adapt quickly in order to do that. All three shorts have a very different tone and look, which kind of chart my development, if there’s been any. I enjoy telling a short story over ten, twenty minutes and being able to get the reactions I get, whether that’s covering of eyes or flinching or, in more extreme cases, vomiting and fainting. I know the arguments that say that short film-making is no longer an effective way to get your name out there and that it’s features or bust, but to that I say, it hasn’t been a bad experience for me at all. Maybe only in financial terms, to a small extent but – for me – there’s a hell of a lot more people that know me for my short films than ever did with my writing.

As for features, yeah, I have a few scripts ready to go. It’s definitely what I want to do…and soon.

As a horror fan yourself – what are some of your own favourite films and directors?

I love The Wicker Man. It’s a real comfort film to me. Plus, the score and songs make it almost like a weird musical, which kind of tickles me. My top horror films will always feature The Wicker Man, Re-Animator, Halloween, Hellraiser, Cronenberg’s The Fly and The Abominable Dr. Phibes. They’re my go-to’s. As for directors, that’s easy too. David Cronenberg, David Lynch and John Carpenter. Aside from horror, I’m a huge Muppets and Godzilla fan. I actually for a while held a secret ambition to work on The Muppets!

Finally, what are your plans for the coming year?

Ink and Split are still out at festivals so hopefully I will pop up at a couple of those. I’m also in pre-production on what is likely my last short film, though we aren’t actually shooting until June. It’s not body horror this time, rather a dip of the toe into sci-fi horror/fantasy territory. We have most of the same crew from Ink returning, with Grant Mason handling the FX again and BAFTA winner Alan C. McLaughlin back as cinematographer. We have also just locked in our actors, so it’ll be the first time I have worked with recognisable horror actors too, which is utterly exciting and humbling. Can’t say too much more on it right now, unfortunately.

After that, I’m all about the features…

You can keep up to date with Andy’s forthcoming work via the Shining Example films website – or, follow them at Twitter or Facebook.

Thanks to Andy Stewart

Blu-ray Review: Ganja & Hess (1973)

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

When Blacula appeared back in 1972, it was an immediate, if a surprise, success: the way that it catered to audiences via its excellent cast without talking down to anybody (the odd comic turn notwithstanding) whilst adding something strong and new to an already tried-and-tested vampire horror genre saw certain cinemas taking record profits, and you have to strike while the iron is hot – so it didn’t take long (only a few months in fact) before film studios were eagerly trying to commission their own Blacula before the crowds moved away, spending their cash on the next next big thing. Step up one-time director Bill Gunn. Gunn, being a practical man, was all too happy to take advantage of the money being made available for a new movie, ostensibly another ‘black vampire’ film – but his resulting work, Ganja & Hess (also known by other titles, amongst which – you’ve guessed it – Black Vampire) plays fast and loose with the vampire theme to such an extent that it’s dubiously a part of the genre at all. The studio hated the resultant work, and demanded that it be so cut and edited that Gunn, angry and disappointed, took his name off the credits. The film has been knocking around only in varying versions in the years since, but never until this point – and the work of Eureka Entertainment – has this cut been restored. So, at last, we get to see the film the way the director intended, or pretty damn close. And, after all that, I find it’s quite unlike anything else I’ve seen – sometimes brilliantly, sometimes bafflingly so.

One of the first directorial decisions to confuse the hell out of me is the way Gunn references what I’d say are key plot points – by doing it all off-screen, either via some brief on-screen text just after the opening credits roll, or even more infuriatingly (according to your personal preferences, of course) by having composer Sam Waymon singing about what’s happened. In any case, we learn that anthropologist Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones, a.k.a Ben from Night of the Living Dead) was conducting research on the legendary Myrthian civilisation in Africa when he was stabbed by a ceremonial dagger. The attack failed to kill him, and on his recovery, he found himself craving human blood. This is all before we really meet Hess, however, so it’s made clear from this choice of introduction that we can forget any expectations of a standard narrative, or indeed anything approaching what we might associate with either the horror or the equally nebulous ‘blaxploitation’ genres. Had Gunn made the choice to film that which we’re left to glean here, costs also allowing of course, then there would have been plenty of options for sex, action, gore, horror or anything similar, but obviously that was never the director’s intention.

With that established, we’re pitched into an oddly art-house state of affairs; lengthy, naturalistic scenes inside an evangelical New York church contribute little, other than allowing us to meet the pastor there, who doubles up as Hess’s chauffeur and does have some plot relevance in due course. We find Hess himself established in a fine house in New York; there are a lot of sequences pitched in to hit us over the head repeatedly with the fact that he’s an intelligent and refined man, mainly through lots of still shots of pieces of art, and we see this intelligent and refined man (who owns pieces of art, I don’t know if I mentioned that) managing his blood addiction carefully, though being forced to engage in some risky behaviour – such as stealing from blood banks. Things grow more complicated when Hess takes on a new assistant, Meda (Gunn himself) and the unstable newcomer attacks him. Hess does of course fail to die, and when Meda commits suicide, Hess hides the body in the cellar of the house – after drinking his blood, of course.

This little indiscretion could have been forgotten, were it not for the fact that Meda’s wife, Ganja (the superb Marlene Clark) has just arrived back in the US and is looking for him. More to the point, she’s broke, and she was hoping she could join her husband in his new place of employ, as she can’t afford a hotel…so, reluctantly at first, Hess allows her to stay with him, but they soon develop a romantic relationship which will become complicated by his wish to keep her with him forever and her discovery of his condition…

Although in some ways the arrival of Clark heralds a new act in the film as a whole – Ganja Meda is a formidable character and a very strong female lead – Ganja & Hess never drops its strange veneer and perhaps clings to it all the more, refracting the later plot developments through the uncertain lenses of dream sequences, flashbacks, partial memories and lots of ‘what did I just see?’ You’ll notice that I keep returning to the presence or otherwise of ‘the plot’ and perhaps this is my error; maybe, trying to see the film in this way is to miss the point. I don’t think a film needs to be either straight-laced or incomprehensible, though, and in many places I found Ganja & Hess to be art-house for art-house’s sake, full of improvised dialogue (which I rarely get on with since the aversion therapy that was Kill List), clunky camera angles and odd stylistic decisions. There are also references to religion and redemption which labour the film somewhat, either left on the periphery or forced into view. For all of that, this is a film which is clearly ambitious, and obviously wanted to do something atmospheric on a low budget and a severely restricted time-frame – which it does achieve, whatever misgivings I have about the film overall.

In terms of what it does with the vampire motif then, it pulls away from it to such an extent that it really can be said to be an original vision – overtly discussing blood-drinking in terms of addiction and using it to explore a turbulent relationship between two interesting, if lesser-understood, central characters. There are also many impressive, haunting minor details in the film – key to which is the excellent soundtrack, with ‘the call’ of the African tribe which heralds the blood urge a stand-out, evocative device. The overall effect of Ganja & Hess is to draw you in despite yourself, ultimately, and it’s definitely a film which would merit repeat viewings. If you’re interested in the ancestry of the modern vampire movie, then Ganja & Hess is a distant cousin, but an important member of the family nonetheless.

The Eureka release will come with a tonne of extra features, including audio commentaries by producer Chiz Schultz, Marlene Clark, cinematographer James Hinton and composer Sam Waymon, scene-by-scene commentary from historian David Kalat, a documentary about the film – The Blood of the Thing – and a 24-page booklet, featuring an essay by film critic Kim Newman.

Ganja & Hess will be released by Eureka Entertainment as part of a dual format edition on 26th January 2015.

Cults, Crooks, Creeps – and a New Mythos Here and There…Keri’s Top Ten Films of 2014 (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

(For the first part of Keri’s Top Ten list, please click here.)

4 – Cold in July

I’ve been a big fan of Michael C. Hall since his work in Dexter – particularly the early series – so it’s testament to his skill as an actor that here, in the dark and stylish Cold in July, I barely recognised him. Dexter was pathologically cool; Richard Dane, the family man Hall plays here, is a kind of nervy, mistake-prone Everyman, someone who shoots and kills an intruder at his home – before, in a mere moment, realising that the man he was alleged to have killed was not the man he found at his place at all. A sequence of cover-ups and mysteries unfold, drawing Dane into a murky and dangerous world, peopled with crooks and villains – and under the superb guidance of director Jim Mickle (one of my absolute favourite working directors) it is in negotiating this treacherous liminal space that Dane develops into a fully-rounded, self-aware man. As crime dramas go, this really is second to none. Whilst I watched and enjoyed Mickle’s riff on We Are What We Are this year, Cold in July really nails it for me in terms of craftsmanship and originality. What an absolute pleasure to see Don Johnson doing such a blackly comic turn here, too. You can check out my full review of Cold in July here.

3 – Under The Skin

A film which is underpinned by myriad unanswered questions; a film with next to no dialogue, with much of what is spoken unscripted and spontaneous, via men who have no idea they are even being filmed – and a film which still baffles me now, months after I saw it. And yet, of all the films I’ve watched this year, Under The Skin must surely be the one which continues to engage and intrigue me most. My opinion of it has steadily developed and changed, moving from utter frustration at its strange structure and refusal to follow even the barest conventions of plot development, through to respect and now, coming full circle, into a staunch defender of the film; I’d even go so far as to say that I think it’s one of the most original science fiction films I’ve seen. It takes courage and hard work to make a film which can settle into your consciousness like that, let alone alter your ideas towards it months after the fact, but director Jonathan Glazer has done it, electing to let the strange story play out in incredibly suitable, eclectic fashion. Vital to all of this, of course, is Scarlett Johansson as the nameless female alien; she seems to have become the go-to gal for beautiful, emotionally detached alien characters since performing this role, but she really is perfect here, looking amazing but also chillingly inhuman; the beach scene in this film, for example, is genuinely disturbing and upsetting, and her utter inability to interpret what she is seeing as tragedy really underlines just how far she needs to travel to develop even a thread of the humanity she – eventually – seems to crave. Me and Ben discussed the film after we’d seen it earlier this year; as you can see, the jury was much more out at the time. If asked now, I’d say that Under The Skin is completely mesmeric – an odd yarn, but a fascinating one.

2 – Oculus

When you happen to be someone that enjoys supernatural horror, you often find yourself chasing after it, always looking for the good stuff. You get incredibly picky; a scene here or a dissatisfying conclusion there, and you’ll tend to write off the whole. Or is that just me? Anyway, I know that many people disagree with me on Oculus (our own Steph was a bit more guarded in her response) but to me, this is an excellent example of supernatural horror. Mike Flanagan had already shown himself a capable horror director in Absentia; in Oculus, he made my skin crawl, which is the biggest compliment I can pay it.

It starts from a reasonably standard premise – a haunted object, in this case a mirror – and then veers off into its own domain, creating a back story which doesn’t give up all of its secrets, and establishing, in the hinterland between these secrets and the very new technology which siblings Kaylie and Tim are using, something deeply malevolent. You are never really given an indication of why the mirror does what it does: any moralising on the film’s behalf would very likely have weakened the overall impact, and certainly reduced the creep factor. We just have to accept that the haunting takes place, whilst also, via the very effective use of flashback, bear witness to a happy family being destroyed. But by what? It’s some time before there’s any indication that anything happened in the family home at all, beyond marital disharmony and children’s overactive imaginations. By the time you have any sort of certainty about the nature of what happened, you feel as bewildered and traumatised as the key players here. Mirrors have long held a place in horror tradition, too, and the artifact itself here is used to excellent effect.

1 – Spring

Back in 2012, Resolution – the debut feature by filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead – made my end of year list, and they’ve gone and done it again with their second feature, Spring. Resolution was a highly original development on the ‘found footage’ genre and absolutely teeming with ideas, all of which were all pinned on a very risky end sequence, which gave lots of us pause for thought at the time; this isn’t an issue with Spring, although there is plenty of ambiguity to be had in the end sequence here, too. We don’t know what will befall the characters at the end of it all in Spring, but it ties in pleasingly with the film as a whole – a film bold enough to do the unthinkable for many filmmakers. It successfully establishes its own mythos. And what’s more, it works brilliantly. How often does an entirely new cinematic creature come around in this way? One of the real joys of following indie filmmaking is seeing inventiveness of this kind, and Spring is rife with pleasant surprises.

Add to this a genuine, believable array of characters, gorgeous locations, well-chosen moments of humour and a razor-sharp script, and there you have it – my film of the year, and I’m very excited to see what these guys do with the Aleister Crowley project they announced recently. You can check out my complete review here, and UK viewers – be sure to track this film down on its official release next year.