Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

“The Bastards Have Landed!” 25 Years of Bad Taste

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Alien invasions have taken many forms in film over the years; we’ve had bug-eyed Martians, super-intelligent hunters, sentient gloop, sentient gloop which becomes mass-marketed as a tasty snack, and many new arrivals – be they plant life or meteor-borne slugs, for instance – who have sought to take over the bodies of humans in as convincing a way as possible, to avoid detection for as long as possible. That isn’t quite how it goes in Bad Taste, the first feature-length movie from director Peter Jackson…

Aliens have landed in a sleepy small town in New Zealand, and so conspicuous are the boss-eyed, shambling xenomorphs who seem to have replaced the townsfolk there that, whether or not they’re clad inconspicuously in standard-issue blue denim, they’ve come to the attention of the government. Oh, that and the fact that all the usual inhabitants are still missing. That’s a whopping seventy-five people! Obviously, something has to be done about this. We’re made privy, at the start of the film, to the governmental decision-making on what to do about these “intergalactic wankers” and the powers-that-be are evidently deadly serious. That’s why they’re sending The Boys – otherwise known as the Astro Investigation and Defence Service. Yep, it’s a mnemonic to conjure with, and a crew to be feared. Sort of…

Meet Derek, Barry, Ozzy and Frank: they’re hardly the crack paramilitary team you might expect. Derek (played by Jackson himself) is a batty scientist who keeps birds; as for his colleagues, the kindest thing we could say about them is that they’re a band of likeable pillocks, bemused by their own incompetence a lot of the time, and the type of blokes you’d be shy of trusting with a shopping list, let alone saving the planet. The vicar who joins them, when he picks the wrong day to go door-to-door collecting for charity, isn’t a whole lot better. There’s something truly gleeful about watching this lot try to cope with the situation unfolding around them; it’s at the heart of Bad Taste’s slacker wit, that which has been imitated but never fully replicated elsewhere, because the New Zealand of the film’s setting is completely unique. The Kiwis I know insist that provincial NZ always feels like it’s a square twenty years behind the rest of the world; you see evidence of that in Bad Taste, where the slow pace of life has evidently passed on to its protagonists, come what may – and you’d think there’d be a bit more of a sense of alarm here than there is. Our AIDS guys deal with the potential end of life as we know it with very relaxed attitudes generally; in America, these guys would be self-consciously written as stoners or they’d be at the other end of the spectrum, action heroes; here, they’re neither of those things, they’re just achingly funny regular blokes doing their best, but occasionally sitting around and reading magazines while they wait to see what’ll happen. Course, these are still professionals: they can get it together when they really need to – and when they do, it often leads to copious gore.

If its sense of humour is a fundamental part of the film’s long-lasting charm, then the zany special effects in Bad Taste are a huge part of that – in fact, you really can’t divorce the two. From the outset, the blood and guts are totally over-the-top and absurd; we’re barely past the opening credits when we’ve seen an alien getting his head blown clean off, in a sequence which has aged pretty well and has in all likelihood influenced much later films, like Inbred, which uses a very similar scene. To quote Derek, “I pity the poor bastard that’s got to clean that up.” Bad Taste features gallons of the red stuff, limb removals, literal human(oid) shields, and brains which look a hell of a lot like blancmange – it’s all pretty full on, and more that, it’s seriously icky. The alien who loses the top of his head? Observe his buddy later eating the contents of his skull with a spoon. The film has a really infamous moment of ick, too: ask anyone what they remember most clearly from this film and I bet they’ll say ‘the gruel scene’: I re-watched the film before writing this feature, and the vision of one of the aliens vomiting blue liquid into a bowl which his cohorts then drink still makes me wince/laugh/wince, absolutely in that order. You can see the steam rising off it, for fuck’s sake! So, the grue definitely lends itself to giggles – such as pratfalls which crack heads open (and lead to novel uses for a belt) and human battering rams. Bad Taste gives us a uniquely daft brand of splatstick, and rather than body-horror, what we really have here is body-comedy. And it’s human bodies that figure highly on the agenda of the “extra-terrestrial low lifers” that have landed in Kaihoro. The crux of the plot – that these aliens are part of an intergalactic fast food company and they want to push homo sapiens as the hottest new meat on the menu – is a fun facet to the overall farce.

Considering how well the jokes land here, it’s astonishing really that this is a film that had no formal script: one of the reasons for this is that Peter Jackson – that’s the director, editor, photographer, writer, SFX guy and star, no less – took four years (and nearly exclusively his own cash) to get the film made, and so decided what he was going to shoot as he and his friends went along. It works remarkably bloody well; originally planned to be a short, Bad Taste ended up being the (demented) calling-card of a filmmaker who would go on to rather different fare, but not before he’d exercised his imagination on a couple more unselfconsciously wacky movies: Meet The Feebles (with the world’s first hippopotamus to pack lead, surely) appeared two years after Bad Taste, and then of course Jackson made a film that needs no introduction – the classic Braindead (or Dead Alive for US audiences), which is still probably the goriest film I’ve ever seen and one of the most stand-out zombie horror-comedies ever made.

After Jackson had impressed the New Zealand Film Commission with what he’d shot of Bad Taste when he was approaching the end of the project, finally securing finance to get the film finished, it’s fair to say Jackson’s career hasn’t been so much an arc as a vertical line, at least in terms of locations, commercial viability and of course, budgets (not to mention film length). It’s hard to believe that the same filmmaker who was drop-kicking human heads in Bad Taste could go on to an epic project like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I’m sure Jackson himself looks at his filmography and scratches his head from time to time, but there’s a demented energy to his earliest films (and certainly his forays into horror/sci-fi) which means they definitely retain their charm. The grim determination it took Jackson to get his first feature done is a testament to the radically-different works which would follow, too, as it showed someone who was totally committed to the craft, and would do it their own way, whether the vision be of brains leaking out of the back of someone’s head or something a tad more sophisticated, y’know, like Mordor…

Wherever you stand on Jackson’s later films, there’s still so much to love about the imaginative, spontaneous approach Jackson was taking at the beginning of his career; apart from the fact that, for good or ill, the appearance of this lo-fi project probably inspired countless filmmakers to just get out there and make their own damn movie, Bad Taste remains a seriously entertaining cult classic, beloved by fans. Razor sharp, eye-poppingly grisly and laugh-out-loud funny, there’s nothing quite like it out there – there wasn’t before it, and there hasn’t been since. And who knows? It’s always open for a follow-up, if Mr. Jackson tires of his glittering Hollywood career and wants to swap back dazzling CGI for rubber masks. Until such time as that eventuality though, happy 25th birthday, Bad Taste! And let us all remember, as if we could ever forget the fact, that Dereks Don’t Run.

 

A Year in Horror – Themes in the Movies of 2012

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

In many ways, horror can be seen as a distorting mirror, held up to the society to which it belongs in order to focus attention on certain aspects of that society. It renders that which it reflects disproportionate, grotesque or monstrous – and so one of horror’s greatest strengths is that it encourages us to look – in a tongue-in-cheek way or otherwise – at our deepest, darkest concerns, whilst allowing us to pore over these morbid fascinations of ours in a safe space. You can tell a great deal about a place or a time by looking at its monsters: just as Frankenstein’s nameless Creature was a (literal) amalgamation of the concerns of the author’s day, so horror cinema now can reflect our fears and concerns. Ever wondered why zombies suddenly started to run, becoming robust agents of disease as opposed to the mindless, shambling creatures we had known? Perhaps horror was reflecting that, for a while there, the fear of pandemic and illness was more of a concern to us than consumerism or the vacant proletariat, or any of the old preoccupations associated with the walking dead.

So, what can we say about 2012? Well, a lot of what we’ve seen on our screens follows on from years previous – we still have our zombies galore, come to mention them, now both fast and slow; zombies are definitely the stalwart boogeymen of our age, shambling (or hurtling) past the straight-up blood-drinkers, who have been rehabilitated to the point of sparkling farce. Still, the vampire hiatus needn’t be forever, and they do still occasionally pop along to flash a fang on-screen in a way which has the power to appal. It’s certainly possible to identify a few themes running through the horror of 2012 though, and to ponder what it might all be saying about our current state of play. It’s no coincidence that these themes are most noticeable in many of the best films of the year – although, and let me make this clear right here and now, common topics wash up in the detritus of the year as well.

So, without further ado, here are five of the trends I’ve noticed in the films I’ve seen this year. By no means have these themes never been represented in horror before, I might add, but to my mind they have resurfaced in enough movies in 2012 for it to be of interest.

5: The Devil is Alive and Well

…Strange, isn’t it? Or is it? I suppose we can all kid ourselves that we live in the most rational times of all times, but frankly, that’s bullshit. Fundamentalist interpretations of millennia-old religious texts have not gone away, and said texts seem to be invoked more than ever in modern politics, usually to chip-chip away at certain hard-won rights. With people like this in the world who juggle a literal belief in Old Scratch with a mission to override personal autonomy, it’s no wonder that demonic possession has made a lot of headway on screen in 2012, seeing as it combines both of those. The idea of something occult and so powerful that it can erode selfhood hasn’t just popped up in recent American politics; it’s also reared its ugly head in films such as The Devil Inside (a movie so confident in its horror that it didn’t even bother with an ending) and The Possession, and of course there was the obligatory nod to all things demonic in yet another Paranormal Activity movie this year. Utilising a rather more sophisticated spin on the theme, Brit horror The Devil’s Business effectively combined gritty crime fare with arcane goings-on, showing that the Devil is always alive and well in Blighty.

4: Urban Life is Hell

The likes of F and Eden Lake in recent years have clearly shown that the modern, urbane spaces we have created not only aren’t immune to horror, but can generate some specific horrors of their own. So, in the year that many European cities have burned, the notion of an Other on our streets, sentient but sadistic, living by very different rules, has continued to hold certain sway within the genre. Citadel had much in common with F in that its hooded creatures were borderline supernatural in their omnipotence, as well as being just as vicious. Whatever your take on what we at Brutal As Hell have coined ‘chavsploitation’, the fact that we can debate it suggests at least that it’s touching upon certain common nerves and referencing something which we recognise, even if we don’t like its distortions. In The Raid and Dredd 3D, the tower-block dwellers weren’t supernatural, but they were certainly organised and pissed off; both films feature criminal armies in vertical camps, and serve to remind us that sometimes even modern cities can contain foreign countries.

3: It’s All in the Genes

Concerns over what gets dragged up whenever humankind makes significant ‘progress’ is as old as the hills when it comes to the horror genre, but as scientific focus alters, so does its warped reflection. This year, genetics has figured very highly: Errors of the Human Body combined body horror with melodrama as an esteemed doctor tried to get to the heart of the genetic abnormality that killed his son, encountering gung-ho experimentation and the threat of harm along the way which plays with the suspicions held by many about just what goes on in these sterile, efficient but possibly dangerous laboratory spaces. In Prometheus, wormhole-sized plot issues aside, we’re taken to a variant on the Alien universe where it transpires that the whole human race was genetically-engineered, and the robot David treats the crew like guinea pigs, deliberately toying with their DNA for his own and his employer’s own sinister curiosity.

Childlike fascination with the potential of science and especially genetics has given us a fair amount of childish humour, too. SyFy continue to bolt together various unlikely critters with the same pointless enthusiasm as an acid-head in a Lego box, surely pushing the tolerance of even the most committed creature feature fans. It all makes Piranha 3DD seem sane. However, it’s not all lowest common denominator stuff: Japanese movie Dead Sushi brought malevolent modified snacks to the screen, and made it all batshit crazy enough to work…

2: You may feel a little sting…

Following on from the last theme somewhat, 2012 has definitely been the year of the scalpel. Surgery, for many people living in the 21st Century, is so much more than a procedure undertaken to remove this or to fix that for health reasons: plastic surgery is commonplace, and more often than not it’s driven by purely aesthetic decision-making. But it’s still surgery: you still have to put yourself into the hands of another individual, and trust that what they do to you when you’re not even breathing for yourself is what you want or need. It’s little wonder that this crops up as a theme in horror cinema then, and this year surgery has formed the bedrock of two much-debated, contentious indie movies. American Mary has been a real cause célèbre throughout the year, dividing opinion pretty squarely between those who consider it flawless body horror and those who think it’s the Emperor’s New Clothes. Regardless, its subject matter – of a damaged young medical student offering surreptitious body modifications in order to support herself – finds some echoes in Excision, another film in which surgery is key, and another example of a damaged individual whose medical aspirations turn problematic. Hand over your bodies to these individuals at your peril, perhaps. Or, indeed, you could hand over your body to an individual like Syd Marsh…

Antiviral, my favourite film of the year, masterfully extends a facet of modern life we’d all recognise and takes it into grotesque, medicalised territory. In its world, obsessive celebrity fans can enjoy ‘biological communion’ with their favourite stars, paying a handsome sum in order to be deliberately infected with the stars’ viruses. It’s designer contagion, and the Lucas Corporation trades well in it. Loneliness mingles with sickness in Antiviral, and it’s all packaged in worryingly plausible terms, just one degree of separation from our world. That’s what makes it so unsettling, and so very timely.

1: Technology is Terror

The ongoing, exasperating prevalence of ‘found footage’ movies within the horror genre points to one thing, if it does nothing else: technology is everywhere, even in the hands of those who you’d suppose would struggle with shoelaces. Technological advancement is, then, no barrier to horror; rather, horror creeps very comfortably into technology, adapting to it and colonising it. For me, the Japanese horror movies which first broke into the Western market in the mid- to late-Nineties were ground-breaking in this respect. Ring and The Grudge showed us that ghosts and demons were happy to upgrade, inhabiting CCTV, mobile phones and much more. Interestingly, we’ve had a few films this year which went rather retro in their use of technology as a plot motif, going back to the sinister video tape idea so important to Ring (V/H/S) or even back beyond that, to the 1970s and to the horror inherent in devising a contemporary movie soundtrack (Berberian Sound Studio).

We’ve seen much more up-to-date gadgetry at use in the genre this year too, though: Sinister made a creepy game out of the DVDs which told the tale, and the enjoyable Resolution combined the lot, running through obsolete recording equipment right through to new model laptops. The point which Resolution reiterates is that dark forces are always with us, adapting to whatever medium they require. Whatever’s cutting edge can have a cutting edge, if needs be. And, of course, The Cabin in the Woods took the notion of old evil refracted through modern trappings to its zenith, in one of the most enjoyable and original movies of the year. Surveillance culture has never been so successfully married to the horror genre as it has here – and perhaps that is key to why we’re seeing so much horror refracted through so many media. If we’re all watching each other, then maybe the thought of something else watching us watching each other is, as horror tropes go, as present and correct as it is perennial.

Horror in Short – Brutal Relax (2010)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Here in the UK, we’re now in the grip of a good old fashioned British winter (with the exception of all the flooding, which is a fairly new development): at the moment, we have to contend with that unique Blighty cold which clings to your bones, frost, snow and high winds. Marvellous. That’s at least one reason why I’m happy to be bringing the world of Brutal Relax to Brutal As Hell – it’s just nice to see the sun, sand and sea, even if this turns out to be a very unorthodox beach break…

The singular Mr. Olivares (José María Angorrilla) is under strict doctor’s orders to stay calm, as we see him leaving the care of some sort of institution: we can guess, even at this stage, that perhaps he has a bit of a temper, so specific is the doc who suggests he should go for a nice vacation somewhere. Anywhere would be fine, just so long as he stays tranquil. So where better than a pleasant, sheltered beach?

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Brutal Relax!

The gag here is remarkably simple, but it’s executed with such a sense of fun that it just works brilliantly as a gore-punctuated farce, in the truest sense of the term; that being ‘a light, humorous play in which the plot depends upon a skilfully exploited situation rather than upon the development of character.’ It is light and humorous, which is a wonder when you consider the limbs flying and the ribcages sailing through the air.

That said, there’s a long horror tradition of gory farce. In a few ways, the high-action scenes reminded me of scenes in Braindead (a.k.a Dead Alive), albeit with a dash of CGI here and there which the older film didn’t have; all the same, you look at that body-strewn beach at the end, and you recognise the excess with a wry smile. The action scenes here are a lot of fun as well as being well-handled; deliberately, gleefully cartoonish, with a group of zombie-creatures who, shall we say, can be ‘deconstructed’ in a nice range of increasingly OTT ways as payback for their misdeeds – all while that happy-go-lucky soundtrack trills away in the background. Brutal Relax: in a nutshell, it’s energetic, nicely self-aware and very entertaining.

One final remark I’d make is that, regardless of the tone of the film, using a dead toddler to beat zombies to death with is the mark of a brave filmmaking team…so let’s hope we get to see more of their work in future. Hey, Mr. Olivares could always make a welcome return…

With thanks to the Brutal Relax team.

Good Enough to Eat: 5 of the Best Cannibal Movies

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Ah, the internet. It’s hard to remember a time when it wasn’t around, helping people to find that special someone whilst simultaneously making it possible to cut right to the chase. Don’t want to spend months of your life concealing your hang-ups and fuck-ups until you get to say what you want to say? Simply find the right website, and you can feel free to unleash your inner self. That’s what a certain gentleman called Armin Meiwes did, and he found just what he wanted…

Armin Meiwes, whose birthday it is today, may have become a vegetarian (!) since being sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for his actions, but his tastes weren’t always quite so pedestrian. Meiwes – an otherwise unassuming, well-respected citizen of the small town of Rotenberg in Germany – had a dream. That dream was to consume the flesh of a willing human being, and he found just such a person, through a site called The Cannibal Café. Hey, there really is a website for everything. He had placed an ad there looking for a ‘well-built 18 to 30 year old’ who would be willing to be eaten by him; Bernd Jürgen Brandes answered the call, and the rest, as they say, is penis-eating history.

The case generated global fascination and revulsion in equal measure, as it always does when it turns out that cannibalism isn’t necessarily something that happens ‘over there’, well away from the modern, safe, civilised parts of the world: in fact, rare as it might be, it’s always been with us, lurking at the fringes of our consciousness and occasionally making itself known to us. And, although there’s a fine pedigree of exploitation movies which deal with the topic from the point of view of Westerners abroad (and totally screwed), I’m really more interested in movies which play around with this surprisingly versatile topic a little more. Here is my pick of the movies which use cannibalism as a theme in a number of interesting ways, and not a cocky anthropologist film crew in sight. Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Herr Meiwes.

Meat Grinder (2009)

As Ben noted in his review of the Thai movie Meat Grinder, this is a film which suffered badly at the hands of a misguided marketing campaign: in representing it as a torture-fest, the real story at the heart of this slick, well-made movie was completely overlooked. Sure, Buss (played by the refreshingly ordinary Mai Charoenpura) perpetrates some horrors, but the real horror here is that Buss is living by the old adage, ‘I do unto others what has been done to me’. Her methods are bloody, yes. but as the well-paced film reveals the trauma which drives Buss to her actions, you cannot fail to empathise with her. A combination of necessity and personal trauma drives her on, and as such this is a powerful film which examines abuse and poverty rather than revelling in gore. Don’t be fooled by the cover art; it was chosen by an idiot.

Trouble Every Day (2001)

Is the appetite for sex all that far away from the appetite for flesh? The tagline for Trouble Every Day reads ‘I love you so much, I could eat you’; pull that platitude apart, and there’s something rather odd about conflating love with consumption. Well, director Claire Denis chooses to take it very literally in this blood-soaked, erotic take of science gone awry, warped libidos and damaged individuals. The absolute highlight of this movie is Beatrice Dalle as Coré; she is ‘sick’ with a disease relating to her husband’s research into the human libido. He literally boards her up in their apartment when he isn’t around to keep an eye on her, and why? Well, Coré’s sex drive now means she gets off on eating her partners in flagrante. You have to wait an hour for Dalle’s key scene here, but man, is it intense. I initially felt that this film would have benefited by greater use of Dalle, but actually, what we do get is so jaw-dropping that it’s more than enough.

Soylent Green (1973)

One of the best science fiction movies ever made, Soylent Green explores a future which is close enough and recognisable enough to fill us with unease. Soylent Green is an exploration of the horrors of overpopulation, and what might happen to people when they become expendable – a problem to be rationalised. The cannibalism in the movie is unwitting, a final insult to be heaped upon the citizens by the wealthy Soylent Corporation: the poor are condemned to consume one another. The movie contains one of the most stark, unsettling scenes every to be committed to celluloid: as Sol (Edward G. Robinson, shortly before his own death) signs himself up for voluntary euthanasia, the move between his last moments of happiness and the abrupt efficiency of the production line to which he now belongs is absolutely heart-rending.

Dumplings (2004)

Vanity takes people to some very dark places, but I’m not one of those people who automatically assume that a preoccupation with appearance means the person is necessarily stupid or shallow. There can be a lot at stake, or at least there can feel like there is – as is the case for Mrs. Lee (Miriam Yeung Chin Wah), a woman who, though still attractive, fears losing her looks because she fears losing her husband altogether. She is willing to try anything, and so when she finds out about a woman called Mei and her famous ‘rejuvenating’ dumplings with a special ingredient, she seeks them out. These things work; Mrs. Lee will find out why, and what follows is a plot often blackly comedic, but ultimately sad. The lives of the women portrayed here are desperate, and desperation breeds harmful behaviour. In the pursuit of eternal youth, we already know people will try just about anything.

Of course, the film gained an extra veneer of sinister plausibility when earlier this year, it transpired that Korean customs officials had seized a cargo of Chinese pills filled with powdered human foetuses…

The Mad Butcher (1971)

And speaking of sinister plausibility – ever heard of Fritz Haarmann? We come full circle back to Germany with the last film in my selection, and surely the makers of The Mad Butcher were knowingly referencing the cannibal killer Haarmann, who was thought to have disposed of some of his victims by selling them as ‘pork’ to unsuspecting neighbours. After a spell in an asylum, our main character Otto Lehman (Victor Buono) resumes his old trade as a butcher, but it doesn’t go so well. He accidentally kills his wife, Berta, during an argument, and – not knowing what to do with her – decides to turn her into sausages. Of course people start asking questions about her whereabouts…and they get the same treatment. It’s a film with many flaws, sure, but The Mad Butcher is fun primarily thanks to the enjoyable performance given by Buono, who manages to bring a strange kind of warmth to the role. If you ever thought it’d be impossible to like a man who’d just ground up the missus, well, look no further that The Mad Butcher. Although like Buss in Meat Grinder, he acts out of expediency, two films could not be more different in tone. If anything, The Mad Butcher turns cannibalism into a bit of a chore!

Horror in Short: The Can-Cannibals Double Feature

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

I’ve heard a new term being used recently – on Twitter, as you might expect – and that term relates to the new wave of retro-styled trailers and movies we’ve been seeing so much of lately, those projects which hark back to a seedy, insalubrious, straight-to-video heyday. That term, folks, is ‘rewindhouse’, and yes, I am ashamed of myself for spreading it any further. That said, the fact that someone, somewhere felt the need to coin it at all surely says something; there’s evidently enough of this around now that we can make some generalisations. Perhaps it’s even – eek – a new sub-genre. But there’s very little point in getting wrapped up in that for the moment; what we want to know is, are the films themselves any good?

Well, yeah, they certainly can be. The style allows filmmakers to play around with excess whilst delving into themes and language which just wouldn’t fly in a conventional setting – but, if you care to make it retro, you can get away with murder (and a lot more besides). How much you enjoy this experience depends a) on how much you can keep your tongue in cheek and b) how much you know and enjoy the films which have inspired the new wave of homage. Which brings me onto The Can-Cannibals Double Feature, directed by Matt Ragsdale. This follows in the footsteps of the fake trailers which people seemed to enjoy a hell of a lot more than the Rodriguez/Tarantino Grindhouse back in 2007…

The Can-Cannibals Double Feature (Grindhouse Trailers) from Matthew Ragsdale on Vimeo.

Well, first things first, this is rather different fare to what we’ve been covering in the Horror in Short section over the past few weeks, and as they say – variety is the spice of life. That said, any film which is emulating films with had microscopic budgets with an even more microscopic budget of its own is at risk of certain problems, and this double-feature trailer feels raw even when perhaps it isn’t meant to be – there are some issues with post-production, which you might expect, and this is rather a long trailer, when it might have been snappier if it was shorter.

But, what you do get is a sense of fun from proceedings and of a cast enjoying the experience of filming. Hell, I’d have been happy to see the girls (a real-life burlesque troupe) going even more over-the-top in their performances than they did, and I was happy that they got some good old-fashioned lo-fi gore in there. A grindhouse trailer ain’t complete without some blood and guts. Of the two ‘trailers’, I think Rebelle’s Revenge is the superior one for me: one big reason for this is that Courtney Cipriani as Rebelle brings the right sort of sneering attractiveness to her role. She looks the part and talks the talk, and we get the best lines of the film in this half of the reel.

I’d be lying if I said this was a film without any problems, sure: but the fact that it got made on 200 bucks and a tonne of goodwill shows the type of bloody-mindedness which surely helped bring us the grindhouse material we’re now so often seeing revisited and extolled. With a better budget and armed with more experience, who knows? If it in any way features hot women with scars and guns, you can bet there’ll be a market for it.

With thanks to Matthew Ragsdale

Horror in Short: Séance (2009)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

The Czech Republic is famous for being the setting of The Golem, which became one of the first horror movies ever filmed – but, excepting the possibility that we’re just not getting to see them, we haven’t seen much horror coming out of that part of Europe. That is, until director Robin Kašpařík – just twenty-three years old at the time of shooting – brought out his superb short film ‘Seance’, which I am delighted to be able to share here at Brutal As Hell. If you’re a fan of supernatural horror, then turn down your lights, turn up your volume, and watch this gem of a short film.

Seance from Robin Kasparik on Vimeo.

It’s refreshing to me to see a movie which is so unashamedly macabre in its appearance and its themes. Realism in horror can be great, sure, but I do love these sorts of stories. Seance has a fairytale aspect, and with none of the darker elements excised. The castle, its inmates and the story of Marie, a young woman who is simultaneously empowered (by her abilities) and disempowered (by the way she is treated by all of the other characters in the story) is pure Gothic fairytale. Power and autonomy are key themes throughout; from the Lovecraft quote which opens the film, to the end scenes, there is a battle for personhood – which plays out in a ghastly, pleasing way.

One of the reasons that the story carries across so effectively because Kašpařík has a strong sense of aesthetics: everything is beautifully shot and lit here, and the opening scenes of the approach to the castle (a real 16th century palace) in particular look fantastic. The performances are very strong, and popular Czech actress Klára Jandová – in effect playing a dual role – does a superb job of communicating the vulnerability of Marie. This is an accomplished piece of work, which weaves a sense of foreboding from the beginning to the end. I’ll always welcome the fact that directors are continuing to make this type of supernatural horror, and this is an excellent example of the genre.

Kašpařík is now in the planning stages of his next short film ‘I Am The Doorway’, based on Stephen King’s ‘body horror’ short story of that name.

Thanks to Robin Kašpařík

Abertoir 2012: Festival Report

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

I don’t tend to go on conventional holidays, but for four years now I’ve been making a yearly pilgrimage to a picturesque seaside town in mid-Wales…and, hand on heart, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I first became aware of this unique horror film festival via FAB Press all those years ago, and enjoyed it so much that, not only have I been to every Abertoir since, but I’ve enthused about it enough to convince lots of other friends to join the party. We’re now a committed crew who meet up every year, and we make new friends each year too. This is exactly why I am not going to add any provisos about nepotism in this report, because actually merit has led to the friendships, and not the other way around.

One of the things which has happened in the UK since Abertoir has taken off, though, is that there’s been a real boom in horror film festivals and – for obvious reasons – most of them take place around Halloween. This leads to a lot of tough calls for horror fans on a budget; you can have too much of a good thing unfortunately, and most of us can’t be at every festival, so we have to pick and choose. With the greatest of respect to the other film festivals out there, all of whom I believe are worthy of merit, I hope that my report on this year’s Abertoir will go some way towards explaining why I’ve chosen it as the only horror festival I’ve attended in 2012…

The Film Selection

Well, duh, you might almost say. But it’s not as simple as just scheduling whatever is ‘big’ in horror that year, or succumbing to whatever trend is currently proliferating in the scene; Abertoir has long done a sterling job of balancing classic horror cinema not only with new movies, but movies which may have unfairly slipped under the radar for reasons which have nothing whatsoever to do with their quality. The festival also avoids clashes between films altogether, so that fans never have to choose between screenings – every film is treated fairly, if it’s selected then it’s meant to be seen, and there’s no hierarchy whereby all the hottest films get the prime time slots.

I’ve already reviewed Resolution and Antiviral (also pictured above), which were two of my favourite films from the festival; Ben, who was just one of the Brutal As Hell team able to join me, has talked about the brilliant John Dies At The End and Ben ‘Kill List’ Wheatley’s bloody good comedy Sightseers. Other highlights included the traditional Abertoir Vincent Price film, this time in very well realised 3D (The Mad Magician) and League of Gentlemen star Reece Shearsmith as a deliciously everyday and more up-to-date madman – albeit a complete agoraphobic – acting alongside Pollyanna McIntosh in the short film Him Indoors.

Another notable addition to the bill came in the form of Noburo Iguchi’s latest offering of genetic engineering gone haywire – Dead Sushi. If you’ve seen his other films, then you’ll have a reasonable idea of what to expect from the special effects which go with a title like that, but the film actually has a heart beating beneath its zany exterior and, well, by the end of it all, you’ll have found yourself empathising with a sentient egg roll. if that doesn’t convince you then know this: Asami’s ‘robotics’ dancing is amazing.

Catriona MacColl was a guest at this year’s festival; she’s a warm and agreeable lady who, I think it’s fair to say, has moved from faintly confused to rather proud of the cult status enjoyed by the horror movies she made with Lucio Fulci in the early Eighties. As she noted during her Q&A, people’s love for these films has given her a long-standing reputation and also extra opportunities to act again, often-times for filmmakers who are also Fulci fans. The festival showed two of the three in which she starred – The House By The Cemetery and The Beyond – and it was a lot of fun to watch these flawed, but atmospheric and captivating films on the big screen with a group of other admirers who would show themselves to be utterly unfazed by spider attacks, melting flesh or undead cellar dwellers.

One of the most anticipated films screening at Abertoir this year was the latest feature-length movie from the ‘Twisted Twins’, Jen and Sylvia Soska – namely American Mary, which has been garnering praise and adoration worldwide. Our own Nia has waxed lyrical about her love for this film here at the site, and essentially everything we post here on Brutal as Hell which pertains to the Soskas in any way, shape or form gets a huge positive response. With all of this as context, it was impossible to finally sit down to watch the film itself without carrying something of the weight of expectation into the cinema with me, and I’m mindful of that fact when I say that – actually – American Mary didn’t do anything for me. Spoilers to follow in my next paragraph, whilst I justify that statement and then no doubt get chased from the internet…

Firstly the premise fell flat for me. Modern Primitives came out in 1989, and although the extremes of implants and tongue-splitting are still unusual, seeing them doesn’t exactly pack a punch. Less than an hour away from where I live, for instance, you can pop in for a legal, professionally-done tongue splitting. This stuff isn’t all that underground and hasn’t been for a very long time, so making it the ‘dark heart’ of the plot immediately makes it problematic because it seems out of touch. If the argument is that the plot simply takes this premise as a starting point and develops it into something more theoretical and extreme, then I’d say that it never quite attains that either; it’s either contradictory (Mary says she doesn’t do anything as pedestrian as piercings but we’re soon after shown that she does) unbelievable (whole limb transplants require up to forty staff to achieve) or not revealed whatsoever (as in the rather jarring, lengthy Soskas cameo where they arrive to get some ground-breaking surgery done – then after all, we don’t see it anyway). The explicitness is largely missing, the violence is nonsensical, and whilst Katherine Isabelle is obviously meant to be an emotionally-alienated character, I struggled to believe in her at all. Aesthetically, this is an accomplished piece of work, and I thought that Tristan Risk (as Beatress) was excellent in her role – but I don’t see this movie as genre-defying, rather genre-straddling, and as such incumbent with the flaws of both exploitation and art-house cinema styles.

So much for my contrary view, however. I’ll finish by saying that I was evidently in the minority amongst the Abertoir crowd, so perhaps this is a case of ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. And, whatever my opinion, the film certainly got our group talking. It’ll be interesting to see how opinion divides up (if at all) as the film inevitably reaches its wider audience…

Music, Theatre and Discussion

Abertoir has developed a strong theatre tradition over the past few years, and one of my favourite performers so far was attending for the second time around in 2012: Robert Lloyd Parry performs the short stories of one of the world’s best ghost story writers, M. R. James, and he does it in the character of the author himself, articulating upon the stories as well as telling them by candlelight, a simple touch but a deft one. This year Parry told two stories, ‘The Ash Tree’, which is certainly one of James’s more weird tales, and then possibly the best known Jamesian yarn, ‘Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad’. With some embellishments to the introductions to each, Parry was able to establish an easy rapport with the audience, before effectively communicating the dread and terror at the heart of each story by following more closely the language which James himself used. Ghost stories should be told aloud, and by performing these stories as he does, Parry is now part of a noble tradition. His show comes highly recommended.

There were also talks and discussions on specific horror traditions, such as Italian horror (delivered by Dr Russ Hunter) and a general talk on what exactly constitutes a horror film: Gavin Baddeley (author, broadcaster and sometime contributor to this site) attempted to get a handle on this ever-burgeoning genre, and later opened the floor to the audience members for their own takes on the topic. A fun debate (and some bloody tough questions) ensued…

And of course, no Abertoir would be complete without a silent classic, and a live, original accompaniment performed on piano by ‘frequent flyer’ Paul Shallcross. This year the movie was Tod Browning’s The Unknown, and, as is now traditional, having to watch it endlessly over the previous year had made Paul hyper-aware of its quirks and flaws. You can hardly blame the man, but then Paul’s introductions are as much a part of his performance as his music!

So long for another year…

My report contains just a selection of the films and events which stood out from this year’s festival; there was lots more going on, and it’s quite possible that someone else who was there could write their own report without repeating anything I’ve said above. Now that the festival lasts for six days, there’s even more scope for that to happen!

At the risk of repeating myself though, let me just say again that the key reason that this festival works so well is due to its friendly, convivial atmosphere. The organisers always go out of their way to make everyone feel welcome, they’ll listen to suggestions and ultimately it really matters to them if the people who travel to them enjoy themselves. Without that, Abertoir would still be a good festival; with it, it’s a great festival, and that’s why I’ll definitely be making that trek to Wales again next year. Many thanks to Abertoir and we’ll be seeing you in 2013. A little bird tells me it’s going to be something extra special, too…

For more information: http://www.abertoir.co.uk/

Abertoir 2012 Review: Antiviral

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Ever wondered where our modern day obsession with celebrity comes from? Or indeed, where it’s going? We live in times where the slightest physical imperfection in even a minor television star is reported and scrutinised ad infinitum, often at the expense of what most sane people would judge to be genuine news. There’s an entire industry of people dedicated to following, photographing and harassing celebrities; nothing is sacred, and here in the UK we’ve just come out of a scandal where it transpired that the voicemails of many well-known public figures were routinely hacked, simply to feed the voracious public appetite for non-stories. In light of this, the dystopia brought to us by Brandon Cronenberg in Antiviral is, like all of the best dystopias, eerily plausible.

Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) works for the Lucas Corporation, a company which specialises in providing ‘biological communion’ between celebrity and fan: this is achieved by harvesting viruses from celebrities which can be purchased, for a price, and transmitted. Such is the level of obsession in the Ontario of Cronenberg’s imagination; we see celebrities are everywhere, on streaming twenty-four hour news channels, on every billboard, magazine and newspaper. Syd’s landlady is perpetually in front of her TV screen, eager to relate every petty detail about the famous to her tenant, when she sees him, and one of the most successful celebrities is a woman called Hannah Geist, who is herself a client of the Lucas Corporation. But Syd is undertaking a peculiar form of insider trading by deliberately infecting himself with the diseases of the famous in order to pass them on to the black market. When he visits Hannah to retrieve a new infection from her, he as usual injects himself with her blood. But when Hannah’s condition worsens, he has to investigate this strange infection quickly if he is to save his own life. It turns out that he’s on the brink of a disturbing discovery…

David Cronenberg’s name has become synonymous with ‘body horror’, movies which question and threaten bodily health and integrity, and it seems that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. In this, his first feature-length film, Cronenberg Jr. is continuing with many of the themes which also interested his father, though if Brandon Cronenberg’s style seems even colder, less wry than dear old dad, as well as being honed to say something about the times in which we are living now. The world of the movie is our world, after all, with one or two minor additions. When people go through celebrities’ garbage in the effort to feel closer to a stranger, is the possibility of this world so far from likely? Everything outside of the business carried out by the Lucas Corporation is recognisable, except with one dramatic extension. If the world in the film was more different then the impact of its central premise would be lost, and the anxiety which it conveys so successfully would be less apparent.

At the heart of the movie is the brilliantly enigmatic performance offered up by Caleb Landry Jones. We gather almost no information about him or his state of mind, beyond his actions for the corporation and his illicit actions on the side: he doesn’t discuss his motivations, and throughout he is quiet and reticent. Why does he persist in communicating these viruses to his shadier associates? Money doesn’t seem to be much of a motivator, at least not that we see: he lives sparsely and simply, eating pre-packed food and keeping himself to himself. He doesn’t seem to enjoy any of the company he keeps, has no family that we see, and no friends beyond work colleagues. Perhaps Syd Marsh seeks the same sort of biological communion that he sells because he is just as lonely as his customers. He’s more of an unknown quantity though, and sustains a complexity throughout which acts as a successful lynch-pin for the plot. Also, his disassociative nature reflects the world around him: celebrities like Heidi are famous for being famous, but they’re not treated like human beings. They’re objects, reduced to two dimensions, and in many ways Syd is the same – he has surrendered his internal life for reasons we aren’t given. He lives as vicariously as his clients, in many ways, but keeps us at arm’s length as to why.

So much for the human interest angle, then, as significant as it is; this is a movie about the deliberate harvesting and sale of viruses (and a not-so-subtle dig at what it means to be a mindless consumer), and as such, it is far from lacking in toe-curling medical procedures throughout, some of which are far from easy on the eye. If you are not a fan of unflinching depictions of same, then I’d strongly suggest you give this one a miss. Syringes, bloodletting and symptoms of illness figure very prominently, and by the time we come to some of the final reels this is magnified to truly grotesque proportions. It never lets up on the gloom though, and the on-screen horrors are never reduced to special effects for their own sake; whatever we see has at its heart the same pessimistic message and adds more to the ever-weighty atmosphere.

Antiviral, like all good body horrors, takes an element of the fantastic, but here it is refracted through a ‘What if?’ we can really believe in. Its methods are disturbing and its details are unnerving, but ultimately, this is one of the most compelling stories about profound modern loneliness which I have seen to date. This is a razor-sharp, chilling film, and one which will stay with you.

Abertoir 2012 Review: Resolution

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Chris (Vinny Curran) is a happy fuck-up. We’ve all known people like him: he gets the most out of life whilst utterly out of his head, living day to day and squat to squat, and seems pretty happy with his lot – when he’s not in the grip of meth psychosis and imagining that the very birds in the sky are out to get him. Thing is, for every happy fuck-up, there’s a ‘concerned friend’, someone who will break off from whatever they’re doing to come and help and make it their mission to turn that person’s life around, regardless of whether that help was solicited or not, In Chris’s case, Michael (Peter Cilella) is that friend. But, when he sees footage of his best friend in an utterly depraved state, he doesn’t call Dr. Phil: he goes round to the shack where Chris is currently living, tazers him and handcuffs him to the pipework. He’s going sober, like it or not. Chris likes it not. This is going to be a long week…for Chris and for Mike, as Mike takes it upon himself to stick around and keep a watchful eye on his childhood buddy.

As Chris chides, pleads, and yells to be given his beloved pipe back, Mike – bored, feeling put upon and missing his wife – starts exploring the boonies where his friend has been living recently. It’s a strange place alright, populated almost exclusively by wackos and addicts who find themselves drawn there, to get high, to look at the stars or to check out some of the local legends. On the property itself, he finds lots of bits and pieces that have been left there by other folk passing through, all of them apparently a bit like Chris: he finds stacks of photos out back, some of them are seemingly of sinister goings-on…and then, he finds an outhouse, filled with archaic VCR equipment which he later finds out was left over from a research group working in the area. Curiosity gets the better of him, and he starts looking through some of the film reels. The evidently ancient footage and stills of unknown people’s stories begin to give way to something even more alarming: recent footage of him and Chris, shot by an unknown cameraman, sometimes from an inexplicably close vantage point. And it seems as though someone wishes them to follow some sort of trail – gradually, they’re following clues, finding more material relating to themselves, and soon, also getting hints of what might be to come.

The first thing I’d like to say about Resolution is this: it’s exceedingly rare for a film to be truly able to combine well-written humour with genuine creep factor. Exceedingly rare, but in abundance here. You could be forgiven for thinking, from the opening footage of Chris absolutely off his head, that this was going to be some sort of buddy horror, Tucker and Dale-style, but that could not be further from the truth. Yes, the jokes here land (not least because of the believable and well-acted relationship between Chris and Mike) but Resolution can turn it around, going from laugh-out-loud to cold shivers without either element feeling tacked-on. There’s a skill in evidence there. Quite often, new movies struggle to do either in any quantity, so it’s a testament to Justin Benson’s writing that this is the case.

I was also genuinely delighted that the movie uses some elements of that sub-genre, that sub-genre where, shall we say, film footage is unearthed (you know the one I mean) without provoking either my wrath or my nausea. And why? Because less is more, and this movie understands that. The use of a few seconds of ‘found footage’ here or there is sufficient to establish a motif which is carried on throughout; and, lest we forget, the idea that is presented here, of someone or something ever-watching the unfortunates in question, is a frightening one. Furthermore, it allows for what has in these post-Cabin in the Woods days as ‘meta’ elements to be woven in, though again, subtly so. Resolution allows us to consider stepping outside the film itself, wondering about what constitutes the movie, who is watching who, and what this sort of storytelling actually means.

It is this clever build-up and meshing of themes which provides the film with its Achilles heel, though. The closing half hour of this movie was almost unbearably tense: it had escalated the on-screen events carefully, and maintained my attention. Reflecting on this, I wonder, could the movie ever have rewarded that level of tension? It’s a make-or-break moment in any story, filmed or otherwise: this observation about storytelling feeds back into the themes present in the movie, too, but as a conventional viewer of a conventional movie for the moment, I do feel I wanted that much more from the conclusion. Also, there’s a final addition to the final reel which needn’t have been put there – it doesn’t unravel what went before it, thankfully, but it was unnecessary all the same.

My overall verdict on Resolution, however, is positive: this is a well-crafted exercise in tension, punctuated by believable, human relationships and razor-sharp humour, with some interesting reworkings of horror tropes along the way. In a sense, the success of the set-up is what must have made ending the movie all that more difficult. Nonetheless, I have no qualms about recommending this interesting indie: if all new movies tried for this level of engagement and initiative, as horror fans we’d all be better off.

Horror in Short: The Ten Steps (2004)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

I’ve always thought that the basis of a good short film was simplicity. With a limited time scale, it makes little sense to crowd your film with masses of ideas and impressions. And, sometimes, that simple, but beautifully-expressed idea can be incredibly creepy – not packing a punch, keeping the jump scares to a minimum, but effectively setting up a scare. Thus is the case with The Ten Steps: this is a film which deserves credit for holding out on the audience just long enough to plunge its main character into a seriously sinister punchline.

Director Brendan Muldowney introduces us to Katie (Jill Harding) and Stephen (William O’Sullivan), big-sister-in-charge and little brother respectively, who are home alone at their new house in Ireland while their parents seek to impress at a works dinner, one which could mean a big step up the career ladder for Katie’s father. For that reason, Katie’s aggrieved phone-call about her little brother messing around doesn’t go down too well.

She’s really in trouble when the fuses go, though. Left in darkness in a still-strange house, she has no choice but to call back. Her dad, sensing her growing panic, puts impressing his boss to one side to help her get down into the cellar to access the fuse box…

(Spoilers to follow)

The Ten Steps takes a sympathetic situation and extends it, using something very familiar to develop its horror and in so doing, grounding us in the situation; we’ve all had the lights go out on us and had to feel our way through the dark to restore order. Well, in this yarn, order isn’t restored, and we’re plunged into darkness ourselves as we’re left to ponder the implications of the film’s brilliant, understated ending. All of this works because of a strong array of performances, particularly from Katie, who carries the weight of the growing tension very well.

The film is very well balanced, too. We see enough of the light and ease at the restaurant to really appreciate the shift to darkness and isolation back at the house – as well as getting tantalising glimpses of something which goes beyond normal parameters. Camera angles, sound effects and dialogue build very steadily; this is a short film with a great idea of pace, which allows the film’s ending to have considerable weight, and without resorting to flashy reveals at any point. It’s a brilliant little ghost story, at its best with the lights turned low and the screen maximised, and a fine example of its genre.

(As a side-note, I’d like to say that director Muldowney is evidently a versatile filmmaker: I was surprised to find out, when I was seeking permissions to embed this film here at Brutal As Hell, that he also directed the rather more urbane feature Savage, which was favourably reviewed by Ben last year.)

“The dead might be looking in”: the origins of Halloween

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

As we sit in our lit, heated homes, awaiting the arrival of Trick or Treaters who invariably arrive with a watchful parent or two these days, it may be hard to recall just what the arrival of Winter may have meant for our ancestors. And yet, we mark the same date they did: despite the thousands of years intervening between us and them, and all of the events and changes which have happened in the interim, summer’s end – or Samhain, to give it its elder title – matters to many of us. We look forward to it, or we celebrate it, or engage with it in some way. That in itself is quite remarkable – but many people have no idea why they do what they do at this time of year; why they wear the masks, or light the lanterns…

Although much about the Celts is shrouded in mystery, or has been handed down to us by biased sources, we know that for our ancestors, Samhain was the beginning of a new cycle of light and dark, and as such, one of the most important – if not the most important – festivals of their year: it meant the approach of winter, a truly gruelling time of year, yet one still loaded with the promise of the spring that would follow. Life for our ancestors – those of us with Northern European heritage that is – would have been incredibly harsh during the months of darkness. Make no mistake, these were tough people: Roman historian Tacitus recalls the suppression of the Anglesey Druids by describing a “serried mass of arms and men, with women flitting between the ranks…In the style of Furies, in robes of deathly black and with dishevelled hair, they brandished their torches…” Any army willing and ready to face down the might of Imperial Rome in order to protect their holy lands would know and understand what Winter entailed in our inhospitable climate – and they would ready themselves.

One of the key associations of Samhain was the slaughter of livestock: at this time of the year, farmers would take an inventory of their animals, and kill large numbers of them. Sheltering and feeding an animal over the winter was not as important as sheltering and feeding themselves, after all; this may also be one of the ways in which the festival comes to be associated with death – and we know that the Celts once made human sacrifices, which may once have occurred at Samhain too. Indeed, this may also explain the bonfires which have migrated to November 5th in Britain, and the ‘burning of the guy’ which is now associated with Guy Fawkes may have its roots in old Samhain practices. Samhain is a festival and time of year heavily associated with fire: fire would be used to cook the slaughtered animals (perhaps giving us the term ‘bonfire’ – ‘bone-fire’) but it also had a deeper, ritual significance. Fire is also associated with protection and purification, and the huge bonfire which would be lit by each community would serve to unite them, as they moved into a time of threat, both from this world – and the Otherworld, the land of the dead, which was at its closest at Samhain.

The Celts believed that the Otherworld not only existed, but could be accessed: water and springs were particularly associated as points through which spirits could pass, and when at certain times of the year the divide between both worlds was at its thinnest, this meant that the spirits of the deceased could, in some circumstances, return to their families. Samhain was a time of year to honour the deceased, and even to urge them to rejoin the clan: there are some indications of a place at the table being laid for them, and of a light being lit and displayed to guide them back. But where the company of some spirits was desirable, other spirits were abroad, and these creatures might seek to do harm; like the Celtic belief in faeries and similar beings, the supernatural was an ambiguous thing, and faeries or spirits could be actively hostile to humans. The phenomenon of displaying the grinning death’s head of the Jack Lantern is a much later adaptation of the earlier practice, but some sources hold that it was intended to scare away the spirits of the dead who might not be so welcome…and the same may well be true of the old practise of ‘guising’, donning a mask or making oneself look as unseemly as possible to repel the influence of the malign spirits in their midst.

For all the hardship which the Romans inflicted upon the native populations of Northern Europe, their culture with regards the existing practices and festivals they encountered was often surprisingly pragmatic. Samhain continued under their rule, because they recognised in it elements which were familiar to them. The worship of Pomona, goddess of fruit and trees, and the Roman festival of the dead, Feralia, gradually became associated with Samhain. The departure of the Romans and the arrival of Christianity didn’t quell the Celtic New Year either, at least until Christianity as a force became more organised and doctrinal.

Fundamentalist Christianity still finds itself biting its nails about the continuation of the ‘Pagan festival’ of Halloween. Similar anxieties were held by some religious authorities hundreds of years ago. As a religion which essentially sells tickets to the afterlife, it was probably inevitable that it would eventually clash with a pre-Christian festival which espouses the belief that the dead are free agents (at least during certain times of the year) and that spirits have the power to return and influence the living, rather than being safely contained in Heaven (or Hell). This is perhaps why in the 9th Century Pope Gregory III moved an existing Christian festival, All Hallows Day, from May to November. It was a tactical move on the part of the Church, as outright suppression of the event would not have curried favour with congregations who still kept the festival. Still, the celebration of All Saints’ Day meant that Samhain would come to be known as All Hallows Eve – and then, of course, Hallowe’en. Interestingly, the dead under consideration were now Christian dead, but the association of the time of year with the dead was maintained, and instead of going door to door seeking fuel for the annual fire, now children might go door-to-door seeking alms, or asking for ‘soul cakes’ – baked for souls in Purgatory.

And so the festival survived renamed: it got through subsequent religious clamp-downs, Protestantism and Puritanism, and in the period of freedom which followed Puritanism was probably a decent excuse to have fun, play pranks and do all of the things which had been forbidden. Now it’s a secular holiday, and at the time of writing we’re left with a massively popular festival which reflects a little of all the things it’s ever been, whilst continuing to grow. The turnips used for lanterns in Europe have been replaced with the pumpkins native to America (the country responsible for a large upsurge in Halloween celebrations since the 19th Century) and the penitents collecting for the dead now arrive dressed as horror archetypes begging for candy, but still they come, still they keep the date.

For me, I like to reflect on the fact that we’ve kept this celebration which marks the start of the Winter, and on what we know of its origins. We may not fear the elements the way that our ancestors did, but their perseverance is why we’re here now, and the significance of the date has held. This time of year has mattered, in one way or another, for centuries. Happy Halloween everyone.