Keri O'Shea

Terror Australis: Australia and its Cult Cinema (Part 1)

Posted on November 22, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Matt Harries

For a country which has often courted an image of a roguish bonhomie and raffish conviviality, Australia seems also to possess a dark heart, which lies perhaps in the great vastness of the continent away from the densely populated coastal regions and their cosmopolitan modernity. Since being sighted by Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon in 1606 and then colonised by the British through penal transportation from 1770 onwards, our vision of Australia is based upon the white man’s settlement and his attempts to establish ‘civilisation’. For 400 years the story of today’s Australia has unfolded, yet it is estimated that the indigenous population of the land once referred to as ‘Terra Australis Incognita’ – an ‘unknown land of the south’ – first migrated to the continent across land bridges or short sea crossings possibly as early as 70,000 years ago. So the white man bought his laws and customs to the land, his gods too. Yet these are not the true gods of this land, the indigenous population having developed their tribal structure, religions and traditions over thousands of years.

There has always been then, two distinct definitions of Australian history, and much of the Australian cinema this article discusses comes from the shadows cast between the dark unrecorded past of Aboriginal culture within the ancient landscape and the relatively recent colonisation by the Western world. Much as the Aboriginal mythology – the Dreamtime – describes a land shaped by ancestral beings, so the land itself has continued to produce stories of its own, refracted through the prism of western cinematic tradition for a modern audience, but still quintessentially Australian. Perhaps, consistent with the Dreamtime concept of ‘Everywhen’ – the simultaneous past, present and future – the great Rainbow Serpent, who exists as a common motif throughout the various Aboriginal belief systems, continues to exercise its influence as creator god of this land.

Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975) seems a fitting place to begin this antipodean odyssey. Despite it not being a horror film it does transmit a strong sense of a feeling of cognitive dissonance arising from the juxtaposition of Victorian era refinement and education, set within the wholly alien environment of the Australian wilderness. To tie the film in somewhat with Brutal As Hell sensibilities, it begins with central character Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert) reciting a couple of lines taken from Edgar Allen Poe’s A Dream Within A Dream, which was published in 1849, just over ten years before the events which take place in the film;

“What we see and what we seem is but a dream – a dream within a dream”.

An interesting parallel with the Aboriginal Dreamtime, and perhaps a reflection on the passing of the Victorian era, with its advancements and the ascendency of the powerful British Empire. Indeed, the lives of the pupils of Hillyard School has a dreamlike quality, as beautiful and virtuous young women brush their hair in soft sunlight, reading romantic poetry with faraway looks on St Valentine’s Day, 1900. Awakened from their dreamy meandering morning, the girls are taken on a horse drawn coach trip to nearby Mount Macedon, also known as Hanging Rock, a distinctive basalt rock formation. As the knowledgeable Mrs McGraw (Vivean Gray) describes the geological processes that formed Hanging Rock one of the girls wonders aloud; “a million years, waiting just for us”.

The day passes relatively quietly, the girls and two or three adults charged with their safety lie around in the shade of the picnic area gazing at flowers and eating cake. Strangely, everyone’s watch or timepiece stops at midday. Later, a group consisting of Miranda and her closest friends Irma (Karen Robson), Marion (Jane Vallis) and Rosamund (Ingrid Mason), followed by hanger on Edith (Christine Schuler), gain permission to go exploring. Miranda turns to one of the adults in charge of the the group and tells her “don’t worry about us, we shall only be gone a little while.”

Despite the complaints of flagging Edith, the girls carry on winding up through the labyrinthine rock formation. Ominous rumbling and the whispering breeze signifies a change in the tone of the film. Eventually they stop to nap for a short while in a clearing. Edith awakes, complaining of feeling ill. As she does so, she sees Irma and Marion, led by Miranda, moving upwards to a cleft in the rock. Completely ignoring her cries they continue to slowly climb. Overcome by a sudden fear, Edith screams, and runs back to the camp in terror. Shortly afterwards we learn that the three girls, as well as Mrs McGraw, are missing. With the exception of Irma, who is found much later by local valet Albert (John Jarratt, whom we’ll hear more from later, in his second film role), they are never seen again.

Picnic At Hanging Rock is based upon the book of the same name, written by Joan Lindsay. It is often mistaken for a true story, due to text at the film’s beginning which indicates as much. This presages the modern trend (often attached to flimsy found footage conceits) which uses the ‘based on a true story’ angle to add to the air of mystery. The final chapter of the book, which explains what happened next to the girls, was only published three years after Lindsay’s death, and is not covered in the film, so we are never given an explanation for the disappearance the girls. And while it is more accurate to describe the film as a mystery, it does contain a haunting and unsettling eeriness which bears a distinctly Australian hallmark. It has many other layers of interpretation too, such as the ending of an age (both in historically as well as for the individual girls themselves), underlying tones of unrequited love and repressed sexuality. Ultimately though, it is the suggestion that something lurks within the ancient landscape which has an unexplainable menace, that resonates as one of the film’s strongest elements.

The strange, seemingly malevolent power that haunts the slopes of Mount Macedon is never explained or rationalised. Nonetheless, this brooding menace is a consistent thread running throughout much Australian cinema. Despite the cuteness of your wallabies, koalas and suchlike, there is something unutterably alien about the massive, inhospitable size of the country. Just look at how the vast majority of the population clings to the coastline, leaving the interior largely to the Aboriginal population. When the world’s modern populace steps into the bush, the inevitable tension that arises provides us with a plethora of cinematic opportunities.

One film that carries a strong allegorical theme of man versus nature is Long Weekend (1978). Peter and Martia (John Hargreaves and Briony Behets) are a couple whose relationship has gone through a real rough patch, including extramarital affairs involving both parties and an abortion which left Martia close to death. Peter decides to take the two of them away to a remote beach for a few days to help patch things up, much to Martia’s chagrin. Despite Peter’s beer-fuelled enthusiasm, the couple fail to repair their fractious relationship and often fight, the affairs and the abortion continuing to drive a wedge between the two of them. Their unease is compounded by their own careless attitude toward the natural world. They litter the camp site with rubbish; flick burning cigarette butts into the dry brush; run over wildlife; needlessly hack down trees. Martia displays scant regard for the kinship of motherhood when she angrily smashes an eagle’s egg against a tree, even as the female bird circles them trying to reclaim it. When Peter surfs, Martia witnesses a dark shape in the waves nearby him. She cries in terror, and eager to re-establish his place within her affections, Peter shoots this dark shape from the safety of the empty beach. The waves foam with blood, and a mournful, almost human cry haunts them from far out at sea. One day the thing Peter shot washes up on the beach; it is a dugong or sea cow, and they surmise the crying sound comes from the creature’s mother, calling for her young. “It’s ugly,”sneers Martia at the bloody corpse.

Maybe it the disregard for nature they show that seems to anger the collective ‘spirit’ of the ecosystem. Perhaps this anger stems from some knowledge of Martia’s earlier abortion. Either way the couple seem unable to leave the area, often becoming lost in the dense undergrowth only to return to their starting point from another angle. Birds caw from the trees. Eagles and possums act with unusual aggression. The carcass of the dugong appears and reappears around their camp, as the mother’s cries continue to fill the air, driving Martia in particular to distraction. The warring couple finally part in anger; but they are doomed to never leave. Ferns swiftly grow upon their remains, and mother nature emerges victorious from an enjoyably eerie and obscure eco-thriller.

If it seems like old Mother N. has taken it all rather personally in Long Weekend, we are often reminded that there are beasts lurking in the outback who are quite capable of bringing their own cold eyed brand of retribution upon unwary humanity. 2007 saw the release of a pair of pictures that established the world’s largest reptile as the chief threat of the outback. Black Water deals with sisters Grace and Lee (Diana Glenn and Maeve Dermody) who end up last women standing as their boat is targeted by a lone ‘Salty’ in the middle of dense mangrove swamp. Stuck up a tree for much of the film, the atmosphere is suitably constricting despite the use of a model croc and obvious budget limitations.

Whereas Black Water was based in part upon a true story and sticks with limited production values, the Greg McLean directed Rogue goes for a modern, Jaws-esque take upon the creature feature. Melbourne-born Rahda Mitchell, as Kate, gets to unleash her best Aussie twang as she helms a boat tour down a river in the Northern Territory. The cinematography shows off the undeniable natural beauty of the area, but any thoughts of it being purely a tourism propaganda piece are literally sunk as an enormous and very territorial saltwater crocodile decides to get Cretaceous on their collective asses. Despite the greater budget, Rogue courts ridicule in choosing to make the CGI crocodile far bigger than in reality. However, as far as this kind of movie goes, it’s fairly entertaining stuff, and I’m pretty sure Tourism Australia would have approved.

Completing this trio of creature features is The Reef (2010). Like Black Water it is a film with a limited budget, but in choosing to simplify the story we get some of the most effective scenes of the three films, as a group of friends are forced to attempt to swim across shark-infested waters following the sinking of their yacht. Unlike the reptilian villains of the previous two films, The Reef uses real footage of a Great White Shark – for my money the most terrifying creature on the planet. The camera concentrates mainly on two types of shot. One, taken on the surface of the water, follows the understandably terrified group as they doggy paddle across featureless ocean, the water occasionally broken by a menacing dorsal fin. When the camera dips beneath the waves we see the shark itself circling around the group in that languid, strangely detached way. The Reef may not have any exploding gas canisters or salty sea dog one-liners but it scores highly for simply putting you in the water with a predator of such awesome, Darwinian omnipotence.

To read the second part of Matt’s feature on Australian cult cinema, click here.

Horror in Short: Revelations (2014)

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Now here’s a novel idea. We’re all familiar with the anthology – sometimes called ‘portmanteau’ movie, which typically consists of three interlinked stories, or at least three stories with an overarching framework. Why three? Three definitely still seems to be the magic number in storytelling, as it has been in an abundance of folklore and fairy stories for centuries – but perhaps times they are a changin’. The popular ABCs of Death compilations in recent years have proven that there’s an appetite for something a little different. If we can take on board twenty-six short films, then why not go for something between that and the more conventional three?

Revelations, the film about to be featured here, is the first film in a five-part anthology of shorts, and it has an added trick up its sleeve. The idea behind this collection – called The Forces of Horror, and the brainchild of Force of Nature Films head honcho Roger Sampson – is that each film belongs to a separate horror genre, whilst starring the same core actors. See for yourselves what you think; here is Revelations, with a few thoughts from me afterwards.

The nuclear family has found itself under attack from a whole host of nasties down through horror history – supernatural or otherwise – but some of the more interesting films can stem from the idea of assault from within the family unit, which Revelations is doing here. I must confess from the outset, though, that any straightforward idea of ‘each film, one distinct genre’ didn’t quite ring true for me – though director Sampson’s decision to muddy the waters a little (is it a slasher? Is it a possession movie?) did allow for the film to launch a few surprises. When we came to the freezer shot, see, I thought the film had plumped for the oldest twist in the book – mom’s not as white bread as she seems. Finito. The fact that there was more to come was definitely a good thing, and certainly in terms of sustaining audience interest.

I’ll be interested to see what’s yet to come, and how the different genres will come together to make a whole collection of films. Frankly, the whole demonic black-eyed kid cliche works against the film for me, so I’m praying (ironically) that Revelations has more innovative devilry to come, in whatever form it takes.

As a calling card for the Forces of Horror, Revelations isn’t perfect, but goes some way to engendering interest in how the collection of horror yarns are to play out. As just the first of five films, all of which will be different we should probably take that and run. Keep an eye on Roger’s IMDb page to see how things progress from here…

Abertoir 2014 Theatre Review: The Temple

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

The literary works of HP Lovecraft have long been a source of temptation for horror filmmakers keen to take on the challenge of rendering visible all of those unspeakable, unknowable and unnameable terrors. It’s something of an irony, given that Lovecraft himself wasn’t keen on the silver screen as a medium, and the resulting works have certainly long been variable; but what about theatre? Considering the close focus on the rupturing sanity of so many of his main characters, and their introspective struggles to discuss their descent prior to succumbing forever, it turns out that the dramatic monologue form is a superb mid-point between printed pages and last words – provided it’s well-handled and sensitively done. This is certainly the case in Michael Sabbaton’s one-man show The Temple, based on the 1920 Lovecraft story of the same name.

As with the story, The Temple focuses on the last remaining crewman of a German U-Boat – now stranded on the ocean floor, seemingly hopelessly, with all other crew dead. In our monologue, the captain, one Altberg, is first seen awakening from a nightmare in the oxygen-depleted ship. Thereafter, he begins to recount the incredible events which brought him to this point; a proud, haughty man yet, he describes the circumstances which led to his vessel successfully sinking a British cargo ship and later, how they resurfaced to observe what was left of her. Amongst the debris, he and his men found a body, deceased but still somehow clinging to a rail. Around the neck of this man – whom Altberg describes at this early stage in his monologue as still appearing ‘beautiful’ – he and his second in command, Klenze, find a strange, carved amulet. Intrigued, they steal it.

This is a Lovecraft tale, and therefore what follows relates, as so often, to the chaos which reaches out to touch anyone who gets a glimpse of that vast, ancient world outside of their narrow understanding. Once the amulet is on board, the crew begin to go insane, begin to die; Altberg describes how he responded to this unruly behaviour, attempting to discipline his men’s irrational assertions of ‘dead sailors’ following the vessel, but it’s no use as the ship is variously damaged, then sabotaged, before drifting downwards into the sea, now unable to ever resurface. Ever the military man, Altberg even kills those who grow mutinous; soon, it is only him and Klenze left, with his officer growing more and more deliriously drawn to a mysterious entity out there in the depths…and so, we are left with the captain, now locked in a frenzied debate with himself. Is he, too, insane? Have conditions on the ship been responsible for his mental decline – or is there something to the irresistible thoughts of ‘Father Dagon, Mother Hydra’ which now plague him?

A suitably minimalist stage, with low lighting and the economical use of sound, Sabbaton soon proves himself a master at invoking the audience’s imagination. This is clearly a challenging role (in which parts of which are spoken in the German language of the characters) but he paces his performance very well, although I was most personally engaged by the more low-key, quietly-intoned sections, which reminded me of the most hair-raising moments of a good old fashioned ghost story. I know a gripping monologue needs to do more than this, however, and considering Sabbaton/Altberg is a man whose situation at the time of speaking is even more terrible even than we first imagine, he conveys the encroaching madness of an arrogant man superbly. If anything, this adaptation for the monologue format makes the conclusion of the story more effective still as horror, and yes, the way he eventually allows his mind to ‘correlate its contents’ manages to be disturbing.

Lovecraft wrote about the perils of suspending one’s disbelief – of allowing knowledge too great for the human mind to seep into it, deranging and degenerating it. It’s sort of ironic, then, that one of the finest ways to appreciate his stories turns out to be due to suspending one’s disbelief to enjoy a talented actor giving voice to the Lovecraftian imagination. A welcome addition to this year’s Abertoir, I’d strongly recommend fans of the author or just of the genre to seek this show out. The evident care and work which has gone into the adaptation pays dividends.

Abertoir 2014 Review: The Pool (2014)

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

In horror, certain things seem to go together very nicely, and anyone with even a passing interest in the genre could work out that you Don’t Go Into The Woods if you know what’s good for you; as certainly as you’d lose all of your marbles once a mere half an hour out of sight of the main road, you’d also apparently be throwing yourself into the path of someone or something very sinister to boot, in all likelihood at least. So; woodland, dark water, madness and the supernatural – these are all things which (naturally) figure in new Dutch horror yarn The Pool (De Poel). There’s another recognisable horror at the film’s heart, too: camping.

Two families – putting something of a brave face on a spate of recent redundancies and other domestic trials – are being led out on a camping holiday in the back of beyond, snipping their way through wire fences and ignoring No Trespassing signs to get to the perfect spot of Lennaert’s (Gijs Scholten van Aschat) choosing. Eventually, they find a pleasant place near a small lake, and set up camp there. The minor adversities of finding the place soon pass, and Lennaert, wife Sylke, sons Jan and Marco, a former colleague of Lennaert’s called Rob and his daughter Emilie seem to be having a good time. Not for long, though; there seems to be something odd about the locale, with all of their food quickly rotting or being thrown around. More (or maybe less) strangely, some of the men start having strange visions of a female entity. Could this relate to Rob’s fireside story about the mysterious disappearances historically associated with this woodland…this woodland they’ve bloody chosen to camp in…and the myths of odd beings therein?

Textbook bad choices aside, it’s not all that clear. I thought that the mention of old legends was a big plot marker we were meant to hold onto, but the resolution of just who or what is bothering the men doesn’t quite tally with that, especially given the film’s ending. Via the use of flashbacks to the deep and distant past, it’s intimated that we’re dealing with something else entirely, and this is one of the gripes I have with The Pool – it badly needed to trim some of its sequences to afford us more plot exposition, at least before the end credits rolled. At first, its slow-burn creep factor works very much in its favour: the film is at its best before the mid-way mark, when its economical use of supernatural elements make for a solid build-up. When this continues, particularly when I found myself growing in frustration when the ‘try to leave, end up back at the camp’ motif is repeated numerous times, I thought that the solid build needed to be developed more strongly. The Pool feels like a fleshed-out Blair Witch in many respects, with its supernatural hints, its disorientating trip through the woods and the breakdown of its characters’ relationships – though, it suffers by this similarity, as it struggles to come out with a strong conclusion of its own.

In fact, the more I think of it, the more I feel like The Pool falls into two halves, with the latter failing to sustain the good qualities of the first. There are many good qualities here: for starters, it begins as a very character-driven movie, with a group of people who come across and broadly believable and likeable, and plenty of snappy dialogue between them which helps to establish this. The fact that we end up with two likeable families distracts the eye from the standard horror film setting and certain other tropes, because we want to see what’ll happen to the people involved, and we even have some light relief in the form of jokes which land nicely. However, as the relationship between them all comes under pressure, the dialogue begins to take the strain as much as the claustrophobic setting does: those believable human elements, whilst certainly intended to come apart at the seams, just disappear altogether. Add to this the awful presentiment that you are simply waiting for everyone to snuff it and you begin to miss the early promise of the film’s first half.

I was surprised to see that the director of The Pool (also one of its writers) was one of the writers of last year’s massively entertaining Frankenstein’s Army; if nothing else, this shows that he’s a guy capable of tremendous tonal shifts in his work, and as The Pool is his first feature film, there’s no reason why he’s not going to go on and develop more strengths than weaknesses. Ultimately, the weaknesses stack up here, but the number of effective creepy moments in the film’s earliest scenes do show potential.

“Something Terrible is Happening”: Godzilla at 60

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

The Great Monster, Republican (W. Brown) 1798

For as long as there have been sources of tremendous anxiety and terror – things too incomprehensible or too unseemly to be met head on – mankind has used the medium of monsters to come to terms with them. It’s the oldest trick in the book. As long ago as the eighteenth century, the spectre of takeover by the rabble under the banner of revolution was prompting cartoonists to represent this threat as a monster – a colossus, all too able to cross the sea from France to Britain, were it not stopped in its tracks. Literature, as it swung into Gothic mode, reinvented or even invented an array of monsters in line with the contemporary concerns of the day, with perhaps Victor Frankenstein’s lumbering Creation – a creature often viewed as ambiguous, rather than evil – the best known example of monster-as-anxiety of them all. Frankenstein’s Monster, incidentally, made for one of the first examples of the monstrous to cross from the written word onto the silver screen. The novel formed the basis of a short film as early as 1910, though it was in the 1930s and 40s that cinematic monsters had their first true heyday, with the Creature, the vampire, the werewolf, the mummy and the cryptozoological marvel of King Kong all finding their way to appalled, but engaged and engrossed modern audiences. Horror had transformed itself into popular entertainment in a new medium and made itself into a lynchpin of big studio success, but it retained its potential as a pressure valve, a way of handling the unconscionable, or at least the unpalatable – sex, death, disease, conquest and war.

This was not just true of Hollywood, as much as its successes reverberated around the watching world. Certainly, the team behind Godzilla (1954) or, to give it its original title, Gojira, wold have been aware of King Kong (1933), the story of a prehistoric and, shall we say, single-minded giant that decimated New York after science disturbed him in his own natural habitat. However, though the physical scale of the creatures is similar, Gojira is a very different movie, and its tale is borne out of a very different sent of concerns – though it’s just as true that this particular Jurassic monster operates as a pressure valve for his own milieu, a milieu with unprecedented issues.

Gojira is a quintessentially Japanese entity. As a nation which consists of so many islands, the sea figures significantly in an abundance of malign Japanese folklore (in entities such as the Ikuchi, the Isonade and the Umibōzu) and – as a country which has an ambiguous relationship with its land and its seas, with a cataclysmic history of earthquake and tsunami – it’s little wonder that its first foray into monster movies should use the sea as a basis for terror. However, acting as a balance between old and new, folklore and history, is the monster’s role as a conduit for Japan’s pent-up horror and frustration post-World War II.

Having been prey to the devastating nuclear attacks on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan had to wait for an opportunity to make any sort of reply. These attacks may have precipitated Japan’s surrender and the end of the war, as such rendering them justifiable in the eyes of many, but even accepting this, and also accepting that many Japanese still haven’t come to terms with their own nation’s war atrocities preceding the Hiroshima bombing (if they’re aware of them at all) it’s not difficult to see how the event tore through Japanese national consciousness – yet, as the Americans occupied the country until the 1950s, any expression of the feelings held by the Japanese, in popular culture or elsewhere, was muted. Accordingly, when Gojira was made in 1954, it came stacked with references to what the country had been through (and, incidentally, when America bought the rights to the film from Toho Studios, it excised all mention of nuclear attacks, as well as altering the title to its better-known incarnation – Godzilla: King of the Monsters. It seems that, in the aftermath of war, each side has its own inconvenient truths).

The film starts with a group of fishermen off the coast of Odo Island, making their way back with their catch when a brutal burst of light and a vast disturbance in the water wrecks their vessel. In a clear nod to the nuclear testing which took place off the coast of Japan even after the end of WWII (although it is not succinctly spelled out at this stage) the men are burned, and most drown. The authorities launch a rescue, as relatives on-shore wait desperately for news of survivors from the boats in the area, but it seems that there is more going on than simply a nautical accident. Older residents of Odo, when they see the empty fishing nets next being brought back to shore, suggest that it’s a portent for the return of a folkloric monster they call ‘Gojira’. A series of disasters does seem to point to something more being amiss, leading to scientific experts from Tokyo coming to Odo to investigate. “Today’s world is still full of mysteries,” says one of our key players, Doctor Yamane – and true enough, he and his team soon see the gigantic creature for themselves. The creature must be stopped, of course, stopped from assaulting the major cities – but how do you kill a creature not only impervious to thermo-nuclear charges, but now imbued with radioactive strength? The secret lies with one scientist.

“May peace and light return to us…”

It’s curious that one of the chief criticisms levelled at Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla this year was that it was far too family-focused, too aligned with the fate of one small group of people in particular, because that is exactly the same focus offered up in the original. In fact, although it gets the low-key treatment you might expect from 1950s Japan, at the heart of the film’s plot is a love triangle. Doctor Yamane’s daughter, Emiko, has formed an attachment to the dashing alpha male Ogata; it’s not a conventional boy-meets-girl, however, as Ogata is not currently her intended. They each try to find the right moment to tell her father about her change of heart, somewhat ignoring the fact, at least at first, that there is a third man involved. His name is Doctor Serizawa, and to be fair to Emiko, he’s clearly not a man for heart-to-hearts. War-injured (WWII cost him an eye) and clearly troubled by the nature of his research work, he comes across as a deeply damaged man. However, the unhappy personal circumstances of these three people (four, if you count Yamane, himself desperate to preserve the creature) is what eventually allows Japan a way out of its crisis. Emiko struggles with her conscience, but eventually reveals what she knows – that Serizawa has a weapon which could conquer even Gojira. Serizawa, in his agony, eventually agrees to use his ‘oxygen destroyer’ against the lizard – but his horror of more war, of his invention ever being used to inflict harm against others, leads him to the ultimate sacrifice.

The understated suicide of Serizawa is, to my mind, still a very affecting sequence. It’s all too easy to scoff at the creature FX or the premise itself from a rather pampered modern point of view, but the human element in this story is unmistakably tragic. A broken man, devastated by war, abandoned by his partner and on the precipice of gifting the world yet another weapon of mass destruction, Serizawa decides instead to burn all of his notes and then, having set up the weapon on the ocean floor, he severs his lifeline, ensuring he will never surface again. No one will get the technique for making the oxygen destroyer; no ‘politician’ (referred to as ‘devils’ in this film) will ever get to use it, but his death is the only way to guarantee this. It’s a tragic end for a quiet, but assured man. His final words, for all of this, are words of acceptance. He wishes Ogata and Emiko happiness; he observes the weapon working against Gojira, then he is no more.

The poignancy of all this is enough in itself – less is definitely more here – but the gravitas of the scene owes so much to the accompanying music (the film was scored by Akira Ifukube). The score throughout Gojira is remarkable; the last song, in particular, is one of the greatest ever used in a film soundtrack. Serizawa’s suicide is touching in its modesty, but the soundtrack provides all of the emotions absent from his composure. It’s a bombastic, heart-rending piece of music which I always find moving.

Serizawa is overt in his reasoning for self-sacrifice, but his is not the only reference to war in Gojira. War runs throughout the film, an almost spasmodic urge to document and dramatise the events of the decade before, even if via the ‘safe’ medium of entertainment. Little wonder that the American censors stripped away so much of this discourse. From the nuclear testing which unleashes the beast in the beginning, to the expressed fear on behalf of the Japanese that the spread of knowledge about Gojira could “harm international relations”, to the woman on a tube train bewailing the threat to Tokyo by Gojira, saying she “went through enough in Nagasaki” – the film is a fantasy, sure, but the language is all post-war trauma. Then, there are all-too familiar scenes and sounds of mass destruction throughout: the sirens, evacuations, the fleeing crowds, fire storms, mass casualties. Serizawa was right – Japan had had enough of war. But then, only a cataclysmic weapon could prevent more and more destruction. Only his weapon could kill Gojira. That’s the unhappy contradiction at the heart of the film, and perhaps more than that, an oblique reference to the difficulties of truly starting anew. As Yamane warns, once you open the floodgates on these types of weapons or this type of warfare, nature can’t just wipe the slate. There could be more Gojiras, he warns…

vlcsnap-2014-10-29-18h09m55s217 — Gojira’s ravages on Odo Island

As for Gojira itself, it’s easy to overlook this monster’s qualities now, so deeply entrenched is he in global modern popular culture, but this is a remarkably novel beast, one which reflects the peculiar circumstances of his conception. He’s a ‘Jurassic monster’ ostensibly, a dinosaur awoken from the ocean floor by nuclear tests, but not destroyed – Gojira is very much alive, and he’s pissed off. But what is he, really? A bipedal dinosaur living submerged somehow? Mentioning the science of the study of Earth’s great pre-history, and the age of the colossal giants – the Jurassic epoch – is all well and good, but here we have a creature that shouldn’t be, let alone a creature capable of surviving a nuclear explosion (or indeed using nuclear energy as a weapon of his own, assuming that’s what his death-breath is – which makes him more like a dragon than a dinosaur). Then again, the locals seem to know what he is already, which transposes him into the folklore of the island, even makes him into a folk devil, a creature that has risen from the depths before. Yet, the predictions of the locals that Gojira will come to land because there is no food doesn’t seem to be borne out by the way he behaves when he reaches Japan. He’s not there to eat, simply to destroy. He’s not hungry, he’s seriously ornery.

He’s not evil, though. Gojira doesn’t seem to act out of malice. Like many other monsters before, his behaviour is ambiguous – he doesn’t have a grand plan, rather he stomps through (a magnificently well-realised, miniaturised) Tokyo simply because that is what he does, and because of what has been done to him. Later incarnations of Gojira/Godzilla have pitched the monster differently, but there’s none of that in his first incarnation, and the film is all the stronger for it. Equally, Ishiro Honda’s film understands that less is more – Gojira occupies rather less full screen-time than you’d first think, and his scenes benefit hugely from the film being shot in black and white, as he looks like more of a believable being, part of the surrounding landscape even as he ruins it, and rendered more striking by the abundant use of shadow throughout. Yes, it’s a guy in a suit. But I think Gojira, in the first film, is still a formidable presence on-screen.

He’s also a monster with a massive legacy. Gojira is one of the most instantly recognisable Japanese cultural exports, as well as the source of a seemingly endless array of films back home in Japan. Rarely has he been the ambiguous creature he is in Ishiro Honda’s original vision, though; over the years, he’s frequently been recast as a hero, saving the world from a whole host of other gargantuan monsters. As the originator of an entire genre – the ‘kaijū eiga’, or simply ‘monster movies’ – it’s perhaps not such a surprise that this particular monster has gone through a few changes via a whole host of TV, comics, cartoons and similar, but he remains one of the most versatile in how he gets used in a film’s plot. You can see the influence of this film on modern horror and sci-fi too, particularly in films like Cloverfield and Monsters. The popularity of Gojira is such that, even this year, sixty years after its first appearance, it’s still deemed suitable for a big-budget American remake (which turned out to be a damn fine, fun film, by the by). Not bad going. The word ‘Godzilla’ has even entered the English language, usually used to refer to anything gargantuan in scale – in a similar way that ‘Frankenstein’ is a prefix for any sort of harmful science. Quite something, to turn into an adjective…

Gojira is now part of the bedrock of our pop culture consciousness, and this can make it harder to consider its impact – but as it reaches its sixtieth birthday, it seems our taste for monsters on screen isn’t going anywhere. We owe so much of that to Gojira. It’s also a film which still deserves to be considered on its many merits, not least of which is how it provided an outlet for the frustrations and terrors of a nation. In that, Gojira (1954) gives us a monster in the truest sense of the word, as well as a game-changing movie.

The End Of The World As We Know It: Threads (1984)

Posted on November 2, 2014January 15, 2021 by Keri O'Shea

By Guest Contributor Claire Waddingham

Claire discusses how British nuclear horror Threads is the most terrifying film ever made – especially from the perspective of a historian.

This week, I watched a film called Hot Tub Time Machine. I needed some mindless entertainment. And it was mindless. A group of men get in a hot tub and go back to 1986. Completely mindless. Except for a pretty funny cameo by Sebastian Stan as a self-important bully, who was proud to be a pro-Reaganite anti-Communist patriot with a fetish for beating up Soviets in the fiercely Anti-Russian Eighties – and this did make me laugh, because in 1986, I’m pretty sure someone like Stan’s character would have been considered by many to be part of the sensible majority, rather than a figure of ridicule. The Cold War was at a peak in the mid 80s, with international relations between the two superpowers highly tense. The result of this was a particularly rich strain of culture, with sci-fi producing some wonderful films that hinted at a forthcoming apocalypse. We had The Terminator, Robocop, and Aliens, all of which potrayed huge, nameless corporations bullying the little people, threatening them with total destruction. But none of these three films – excellently made as they are – frighten me. It’s a British film, made on a next to nothing budget and with virtually no professional actors, that does. It’s called Threads. It’s a gritty, neo-realist film. Written by Barry Hines, and directed by Mick Jackson, it’s one of the best films ever made.

Threads is genuinely terrifying. Made in 1984 – a little over thirty years ago – it was produced at a point where Ronald Reagan brazenly claimed that rather than Mutually Assured Destruction, he’d rather go for a nuclear target strategy, and that the world could survive a “limited” nuclear war in Europe. With Detente dead in the water after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the prospect of a nuclear apocalypse was rearing its head again. In the mid 1960s, the wonderful neo-documentary The War Game was banned on the grounds it could trigger mass suicides. After the BBC aired Threads, it was promptly put in a vault for over twenty years.

This Summer, I bought the DVD. This was for my job – I teach History, and one of the key modules for my exam groups is The Cold War. This June, when half of my class of sixteen year olds were out on work experience, the others politely asked if we could watch a film. I then decided that I really needed to show them Threads.

So, we all sat down, in my warm classroom, and I pressed play. After half an hour, they had all gone rather quiet. After ninety minutes, a couple looked rather green. Then they confessed. These teenagers, the Millennial Generation who sneer at the dated effects of The Exorcist and aren’t happy unless someone is decapitated in the first five seconds in the multiplex, were all terrified. Threads had shocked the unshockable generation.

Why were they so shocked? Because this film completely exposes the helplessness of humanity in the face of a nuclear armageddon. It reveals the fragility of civilisation. It opens with a delicately spun spider web – symbolising those threads, the bonds that hold society together. Then it pans out to a shot of Sheffield. Yes, Sheffield. Not glamorous London or bustling Manchester, but a Northern city that is remarkable for its unremarkableness. The skies are grey and overcast, and we open with a shot of a young couple in a Ford Cortina, discussing an unplanned pregnancy. It’s an ordinary, humdrum existence, where people are only concerned with their own issues. Suddenly, we are in a family drama. With the dull décor, the clothes, we could be watching a shoddy Coronation Street knock off. People go to the pub. Go to their jobs. Argue. It’s normal life. A normal life with running water, police, food supplies, schools, entertainment, communications. The life that everyone takes for granted.

Except there are constant news updates running through this. The threat of war. Invasions of Iran. The sinking of the USS Kittyhawk. And then the film veers into a dark, dangerous direction – the attempts of local government to prepare for nuclear war. The angry protests of the TUC and CND that warn of a “corpse” of a country, with poisoned water, dead livestock, useless soil, and a dying population. This is where it began to get frightening. What, this film asks, is the point of trying to survive a nuclear war? What is the point of paying attention to the Protect and Survive leaflets?

It’s not the shots of nuclear mushroom clouds that frighten me in Threads, though. It’s the inability of anyone to actually do anything to help. When the nuclear blast hits, the team appointed to help are trapped in their own offices. And, above them, it’s pandemonium. People screaming in the streets, trying to get to makeshift shelters. But there is no point. The survivors, trapped and terrified, quickly begin to realise that there is no point in living. And it is the eerie scenes after the attack that terrify the most – a woman cradling a scorched baby; an elderly man playing with tin soldiers. No water. No food. Nuclear winter. A man leaving the house after he realises his wife is dead, only to die himself in the streets.

Then there is the prospect of ten years after the attack. Children with stunted language development and growth. People working in the fields. And a teenager giving birth to something that horrifies her, and the audience – except the camera cuts away. It’s that last image that plays in your mind.

A film with a limited budget, then, but one which had an incredible impact – perhaps more of an impact than many audiences realise. President Reagan apparently requested a private viewing upon hearing about Threads. And remarkably, after that, relations between East and West seemed to improve, policy towards nuclear war changed. Threads exposed the ugly reality of the destruction of our world. Maybe it was best for everyone it did.

Horror in Short: The Last Halloween

Posted on October 28, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Psst – want some help getting into the Halloween mood?

You may not need any; it might well be enough that the nights are drawing in, the evenings are getting colder and the cutesy trappings of death and the supernatural are hanging in shop windows. Or, maybe you’re still feeling a little grounded – a bit too caught up in rational, grown-up concerns to be as excited as you used to be about what Conal Cochran from Season of the Witch refers to as the modern practice of “kids begging for candy” and all the attendant fun and games. Still, however the season is making you feel this year, Marc Roussel’s mini-excursion into a very warped Halloween landscape should be to your tastes. We’re pleased to be able to show you The Last Halloween…

What I loved about this film, on first impressions, is how it made me do an about-face. I was initially going to talk about how it’s crazy, in a way, that we’ve come up with a tradition whereby we send children off to harangue strangers, people who could be anyone. It’s already different to how it was when I was a kid – when you would just be left to your own devices for a few hours to hammer on doors – and you usually see parents in tow nowadays. A rule also seems to have developed where trick or treaters tend to only go to houses that are decorated, i.e. they know the people inside don’t mind them turning up, but all the same, it’s still an odd practice in many ways, and I was struck at first by the fact that the kids in The Last Halloween seemed to be on the threshold of something dangerous. Even within ten minutes, though, Roussel messes with this expectation and shows that all is not as it appears. The suspicious householders, the revolting ‘treats’ offered…well, there’s more to it. I loved that, and it feels fresh and fun in the way it’s handled.

I also like the way this film raises a few interesting questions as it plays with our expectations, but has economy and sense enough to let them hang, rather than feeling it has to resolve everything. Based on a comic of the same name, The Last Halloween retains that cartoonish vibe, offering a glimpse of what’s going on outside via a short burst of narrative, with some human interest thrown in there like a curveball. All of this is topped off with some nicely nightmarish FX and just enough of a punchline to make this an effective and enjoyable horror short. All well shot, lit and realised.

Keep your eye out for Mr. Roussel in future. As calling cards go, The Last Halloween promises good things to come.

Celluloid Screams 2014 Review: Spring (2014)

Posted on October 28, 2014September 17, 2017 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

A couple of years ago, I saw the first horror feature penned and directed by Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson. This film was Resolution – a film which easily made it into my favourite films of that year, though to tell the truth, I lost touch with what the directors had been doing since. It was a surprise and a pleasure, then, to find out that their new movie, Spring, was on the Celluloid Screams 2014 bill, and it was just as much of a surprise and a pleasure to see what Moorhead & Benson have achieved with this, their second feature – a film which has forged in a completely new direction from their earlier work, but which retains the acerbic, well-pitched humour alongside all the monstrous goings-on.

We meet Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) as a young man on the brink of a complete meltdown. Upon losing his mother to cancer, he seeks questionable solace in the company of his ever-stoned friend Tommy (yep, that’s Jeremy Gardner from The Battery) and a succession of bottles, bar-fights and bad decisions. Something’s got to give, so Evan decides that to get away from his demons, he’ll just hop on the first flight to Europe and see where he ends up. Where he ends up, at first at least, is doing more of the same, only swapping American beer for European lager and hanging out with two British wasters (in what has to be one of the finest and most well-observed depictions of well-meaning but dickheaded Brits abroad ever committed to film). A visit to the coast, however, changes things.

When he spots a beautiful young woman in the town square (Nadia Hilker) and opts not to follow his new friends off to Holland, he decides to stay put, at least for a little while. And, as per the rules of romance, the more dismissive this woman is, the more interested he gets, taking a job in the area as a farm-help and doing his damnest to convince her to go out with him. Eventually, the mystery woman – Louise – accepts, but she makes it clear that it’ll all be on her terms and that she has no intention of getting too close. However, it seems like there’s more to this than just a lady playing coy. Her behaviour goes from cold to baffling to downright incomprehensible. Just what is her deal? I hope I won’t be accused of spoilers, if I say that it’s not any of the tired tropes you might be expecting.

This is, to my mind, the crowning strength of Spring. Less-ambitious or assured filmmakers would probably play it safe, putting a neat spin on, say, a vampire story, and leaving it at that – not least considering that this is only a second feature, not a fifth or sixth. What Moorhead & Benson decide to do instead is to create a mythos all of their own, and they have a lot of fun taking us through it. Sure, you may be able to spot a nod to an existing idea here or there, including one scene which reminded me a lot of a key scene in a certain 80s art-house horror (which I won’t name, as that would definitely spoil things) but Spring is very much out there on its own. A word which is thrown around a lot when describing horror is ‘Lovecraftian’, in the same way that ‘Lynchian’ is short-hand for ‘a bit weird’, and similarly, in the case of Spring I’ve heard ‘Lovecraftian’ used. Whilst it has some uses beyond the most obvious, as Spring is definitely a film of unnameables and unknowables, ‘Lovecraftian’ doesn’t quite cut it either. Hell, I’m tying myself up in knots here trying to talk about the film without giving it away; the short version is that Spring gives us something interesting, original and – rarest of all – unique. For that, it deserves a lot of credit. Something else which is very striking about Spring is its location; shot in Apulia, Southern Italy, the setting is more than just a pretty face. For all of the stunning photography, with lots of wide-angle shots and aerial work, Italy winds up being linked in to the plot in a very engaging manner. It also allows a pleasing set of contrasts, between the bright daylight and warm sun, and the more nefarious goings-on behind closed doors or in other tucked-away spaces. I always like this when it’s done well, and here it’s done very nicely indeed. Here, we have a beautiful place which is harbouring something which is both inextricably linked to, and yet worlds apart from it.

No ‘difficult second film’, Spring achieves a great deal: it’s many things, amongst which it’s a reflection on romantic love (talk about it never running smooth), selfhood and the human condition – all spelled out with originality and vigour, sharp dialogue and well-realised humour. As if that wasn’t enough, it lands us with an ambiguous ending, not quite allowing us a positive resolution. Nothing is as it seems in the world of this film, and we’re shown this in style throughout.

DVD Review: The Spanish Chainsaw Massacre (2013)

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Judging by the (albeit limited) filmography currently attributed to Manolito Motosierra, cannibalism seems to be his theme of choice. There’s his first film, Corpse Grinders 3, for one; I’m sticking my neck out here, but I’m guessing that the ‘somewhat peculiar family’ of 2012’s Jodidos Kabrones may be up to the same tricks, though I haven’t seen it; then – finally – there’s The Spanish Chainsaw Massacre, or to give it its less-likely-to-be-picked-up-by-gullible-Anglophone-viewer title, Carnívoros. Two, probably three passes at the theme of cannibalism, then – so why isn’t the man getting good at it by now?

The plot of The Spanish Chainsaw Massacre, such as it is, is oh-so familiar. We start with a trope-tastic bloodied woman fleeing through a forest, just prior to discovering the person who was definitely chasing her is magically in front of her and about to wallop her. Which the assailant duly does, though the film is quick to show its hand by then having the leering goon graphically smash her head in with a rock. So much for that. We then head back to suburbia and meet a rock band called The Metal Cocks (yep) who it seems are about to head on tour. Could it be that our bristling caricatures could be about to drive their van through the exact same stretch of woodland, and encounter the exact same leering goon – not to mention a townful of leering goons – who are hellbent on eating them?

In a word, yes. There, I’ve saved you the bother of sitting through forty-five minutes of this not-quite-a-short, not-quite-a-feature. The band get a flat, the band end up in a small town on a saint’s day, the band end up on the menu via a series of fart jokes and penis torture scenes, to give credit where credit’s due, quite unprecedented in cinema. There’s lots of swearing, helpfully pidgin-translated in the subtitles (we don’t want to miss any of these pearlers, after all) some women in merkins (nothing shrieks comedy gold like evident pubes) and the film is punctuated by flabby man-arse throughout. It’s all probably hi-larious, if you’re easily pleased, and generally I am, but I have just realised just how much I have limits.

Apart from laughing uproariously at his own gags, I’m not quite sure what Motosierra was aiming to do here – but if I had to make a guess, I’d say the film seems to owe a heck of a lot to Troma at its absolute worst. It’s almost anathema to say as much in horror circles, and Troma have eked out a few good movies in their extensive history, true, but let’s be frank: without the brand and the almost religious duty felt by many to say they love everything Troma has ever cranked out, a lot of their movies are just fucking dreadful, and whilst the ethos behind making your own damn movie may be admirable, the lion’s share of the output categorically isn’t. This is an epiphany I had a few years ago, and now I can hardly believe I ever didn’t see it. Therefore, when I see a film so painstakingly applying the Troma model, whether by accident or, more usually, by design (endless fart jokes, gurning, crass SFX, ache-inducing levels of cartoonish self-awareness) then a little part of me dies. Somehow, there’s something profoundly depressing about people trying so very hard to be funny.

In the interests of balance, I should try to say something positive about The Spanish Chainsaw Massacre. So, erm, the village where it’s set is very nice. Also, they remember to put in a chainsaw just before the end credits, just pre-empting what was going to be my final complaint of the review. Otherwise, this is like being stuck in a dreadful circus, complete with a random limb-flailing clown which has nothing to do with anything. The film at least seems to acknowledge its circus-like qualities with the Big Top style end credits and music, but one knowing wink isn’t going to justify this much wank. I’d give this a miss if I were you.

The Spanish Chainsaw Massacre is available now from 88 Films.

Film Review: Seed 2 aka Blood Valley – Seed’s Revenge (2014)

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Tristan Bishop

OK, It’s a fair cop, I admit it – I rather enjoyed Seed (2007). I watched it when I was in the mood for something nasty and nihilistic and boy did it deliver. Yes, it wasn’t the classiest slasher film ever made, but it easily stands as one of the most grim and brutal – and the fact that it was directed by the legendary Uwe Boll and didn’t completely stink probably made me appreciate it all the more. Now, seven years later, a sequel appears, this time merely produced by Boll, as writing and directing have been taken over by young German Marcel Walz, who, despite still being in his twenties, appears to have already completed several features, such as Le Petite Mort (2009).

The story here is basically a very simple one indeed – four women are on a hen weekend/road trip. When the girls discuss their route home, Christine (Natalie Scheetz), the bride-to-be, is very reluctant to take a certain way back through the desert, but her girlfriends decide it will be a more ‘scenic’ route and convince her otherwise. Turns out that’s a pretty bad idea, would you believe. First of all they encounter a creepy hitch-hiker who, whilst they originally deem him to be ‘cute’, turns out to have an unhealthy interest in the German girl (Annika Strauss). Soon after they are rid of him, they encounter a stranded female cop (Manoush – just the one name) who also appears to be German (although no-one remarks on her heavy accent being unusual) and who insists that two of the girls accompany her into town whilst two stay at their van. Of course she’s leading them into a trap for Seed, and soon enough the girls are being mangled beyond all recognition.

It feels like a massive spoiler to write the above, but truth be told, it isn’t. This is because the film takes the remarkably wrong-headed step of showing the scenes out of sequence a la Pulp Fiction. Of course, this is an entirely valid thing to do if, say, you’re as good a writer as Tarantino and can actually achieve narrative intrigue by doing this. But Walz is not as good a writer as Tarantino – in fact, it turns out he’s not even as good a writer as Uwe Boll – and therefore the effect of the scene displacement is twofold – a) it spoilers any tension the film might have conceivably mounted, and b) it’s just bloody confusing for the first thirty minutes or so.

My theory is that the film was put together this way so it would open the way it does – Seed inserting a revolver into the vagina of one of the girls for an unpleasantly long amount of time before finally pulling the trigger and then, er, licking the gun. It’s tasteless, shocking, and, unfortunately, the only scene of note in the entire film. Walz was obviously fully aware of this, because the scene gets repeated again in its entirety later on!

There isn’t a great deal to enjoy here – the four girls act to a decent standard, but the supporting characters are uniformly terrible, the cinematography is passable yet the entire film is overly bright and off-putting (I had to turn the colour down) whilst the script goes from downright clunky to utterly baffling. By the end I couldn’t quite work out the relationship between Seed and the other characters (despite them supposedly all being related in some way), and the film tries for some religious imagery and apocalyptic wittering which just ends up limp. There is some fairly OTT gore on display but unfortunately it ends up being too little and too late, which is really not what I was expecting after the nastiness of the original.

The film ends up coming off as a very low budget version of the Hills Have Eyes remake more than it does a sequel to Seed, and in fact the retitling of the UK release (The on-screen title is merely Seed 2), along with the godawful artwork, seems to back this up. In fact, our very own Nia didn’t even realise this was a sequel to Seed at all (and she knows a bit about marketing). In a way this is doing a favour to whatever fans of the original are out there, as this is not the film they would have wanted. In fact, save for people who REALLY like seeing girls in denim cut-offs get murdered, I can’t really see that this is a film anyone would have wanted.

Seed 2 or indeed Blood Valley: Seed’s Revenge is available now via Phase 4 Films.

Interview: Exquisite Terror Magazine’s Naila Scargill

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

Interview by Keri O’Shea

A few months back, I reviewed the most recent edition of Exquisite Terror – a nicely ambitious print magazine which successfully sustains a whole-‘zine ethos and approach, all whilst showcasing a range of intriguing, studied horror journalism. It’s a style which stands out against many other print projects out there, but the fact that we are seeing a slow-burn renaissance of print media in such a range of styles is noteworthy enough on its own. That was good enough for me. I wanted to know more. So I recently nabbed Exquisite Terror’s editor Naila for a chat about her career, her aspirations and how she sees the current state of play in the horror scene.

BAH: Firstly, for those not in the know, Naila – what’s your background as a writer, and how did you come to be editing your own magazine?

It’s a pretty mixed background… I fell into publishing after feeling too shy to take a role in a William Hellfire film, which is something I still think about now and then; life would probably be pretty different—sleazier, for one!—had I gone with it. The chap who cast me asked me to come back to do a bit of modelling and presenting for an indie publisher. I was doing maths at university at the time, and had every intention of an academic career, but I was really into this company’s product—cult film and general counterculture—and it turned out I was pretty good at editorial. Besides, indie publishing is hard to resist; I just love the ethos. I flirted with TV production and film distribution for a while, then had a proper job as a news analyst for a few years, but the corporate bullshit that came with being part of the FT wasn’t something I enjoyed, so I kept an eye out for more fun things to do on the side, ending up with a couple of magazines.

Exquisite Terror came about after a big horror title I was assistant editor for went under. I’d met some great people there and a couple suggested to me that I do something of my own, and they come with me. I’d always intended to do my own thing at some point, so then seemed as good a time as any.

BAH: Audio tapes, vinyl records…print ‘zines. A lot of these old media seem to be making a comeback. Why do you think that is?

Audio tapes, cassettes? I didn’t know that! Well, digital is an attention sponge; you put on a computer, you have all these windows open, and your eye is always partly on your email or whatever. It’s soulless and detracts from the experience. Also, people who really feel something from the art in their lives want and need something more tangible; I think it’s far more involving psychologically to have something you can touch. That’s my entirely unqualified opinion. Collectors like to be able to look at their stuff in front of them and show it off, too.

BAH: What’s your take on how hard it is to make a living from writing these days? Is this something that you foresee will change?

Well, I’m sure it was never easy, but these days, it’s crazy. The only change I can see is that it’ll just get tougher, especially in film journalism. It’s much harder to stand out as a good writer now; everyone’s jostling for space, everyone has a blog, and everyone thinks they know what they’re talking about. If you do get yourself some work, even the bigger titles are paying a couple of bands down from original going rates, just because they can now; there’s a hundred other people who’ll take your place. Also, publishing as an industry has always been one of the toughest even at the best of times, and we all know it’s suffering now.

BAH: It’s become pretty commonplace to blame all the ills of the writer on the internet, and there is certainly an argument to be made for that – but, as someone who juggles a print magazine with an online presence, what do you consider the good points about the internet, particularly from the point of view of your particular interests in horror cinema and culture? Are we sometimes too negative?

Definitely. As far as Exquisite Terror goes, if I didn’t have a website, nobody would know about it, as it’s too niche for mainstream distribution. I wouldn’t be able to make the worldwide sales that I do if people couldn’t stumble across it. Recently the Internet helped me find The Shuttered Room, which blew me away when I was a kid, but I didn’t know the title; nobody knew what I was talking about when I described the few details I could remember. I was thrilled when I found it! Also, when I first started getting into film proper, I used the Internet to research different cuts, and to explore world cinema. We can search for what we want without waiting for someone to tell us about it—obviously that goes for everything, but for people who have a passionate interest in genre, it can make you giddy to stumble across a film you’ve never heard of that looks amazing. Genre fans enjoy the community, too, so being able to get online and connect with people who are into the same stuff when people around you may not be is important. You can feel a bit isolated when people think you’re a bit of a weirdo for your interests sometimes.

BAH:This is a very open-ended question, but one I really want to ask: has being female had an impact on your career, in your opinion?

Well, it was obvious from the beginning that some men loathe being edited by a woman, but an overall impact on my career, I don’t think so. This may be because I’ve chosen the indie route, where most people have a lot of respect for each other as we all work so hard. There’s been a few times when people have tried to go over my head, where I’m sure, had I been male, this wouldn’t have happened. Obviously that’s pretty infuriating, but I’d get the last laugh when they just got sent straight back to me anyway. The only time I’ve felt disrespected professionally was with a comics publisher I left earlier this year, who didn’t respect my experience or opinion at all, even though I was the most qualified. I’m pretty sure I’d have been taken more seriously as a man. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

BAH: What’s your procedure in finding writers and getting articles: do you pitch to your writers, or do you go with the flow of what’s offered to you?

The core team are from the horror title I mentioned earlier. I commission almost everything, as I’m mindful of a natural flow to each issue, but I’m open to ideas as well, and almost everything the guys suggest doing I’ll tend to go with, as they understand what Exquisite Terror is all about and really know their stuff. People approach fairly regularly, but the majority of them pitch stuff that’s already been done, or don’t have a style that fits. Now and then somebody great will show up though, for instance Jon Towlson, who wrote Subversive Horror Cinema. He came to me with a lovely piece on The Exorcist for the third issue, and he’s given me something on Michael Reeves for the next as well. But mostly I enjoy directing it, as I see this as an extension of myself.

BAH: Finally – what’s next for Exquisite Terror? And what are your ambitions for the publication?

I have a lot of ideas, but I prefer to keep my cards close to my chest for now. It’s going to become more specialised and therefore more niche; for instance I’ve got a law lecturer on board now to add a twist to things, and I’ll keep throwing in different angles from qualified people. People want bigger and so do I, but that’s easier said than done when I’m so picky about writers. It’ll happen, just slowly but surely. It probably sounds bad to say I’ve no ambition for it as such, but there’s no real game plan; this is partly for fun, and partly to watch myself grow as an editor. What I can say that Exquisite Terror will definitely not ever do is be dictated to by PR people…

To find out more about Exquisite Terror, including ordering information, pay a visit to the website.