By Ben Bussey
Such is the contemporary horror scene’s fascination with all things 70s and 80s, it’s easy to forget that our current strain of gore-strewn cinema has roots dating back further than that. Yes, messrs Romero, Hooper, Craven and co took the cheapie drive-in scary movie by the short and curlies and dragged it kicking and screaming to an altogether darker, nastier and crucially more sophisticated place, but the groundwork had been laid for them by earlier filmmakers who sought to win over less discerning audiences with hitherto unseen levels of grue, and considerably lower levels of sophistication. Now, I’m not about to claim expert knowledge of this era, but any horror fan worth their weight in corn syrup should know the name of Herschell Gordon Lewis, the director behind what are typically classed as the first bona fide splatter movies – and one modern director who most definitely knows and appreciates HGL’s work is Canadian low budget filmmaker Kevin Doherty. Though this is the first I’ve seen of his work, Doherty’s made four shorts and two more features in the past fifteen years, none of which would appear to be in quite the same spirit as this one. A heartfelt tribute to the earliest days of splatter, Lights Camera Blood! proves not only a hugely affectionate but also remarkably accurate recreation of 60s drive-in horror in all its gory glory.
The premise is pure HGL, and even feels in some respects like a thinly veiled yet highly fictionalised (or so you’d hope) biopic of the man himself. Mandalor (Alan McKenzie) is a walking cliche of a hack director: verbose, exclamatory, beret-clad – but also penniless, under the thumb of an oppressive producer, and ultimately not that talented. After the producer aggressively rejects his most recent attempt at a great horror movie, Mandalor and his cinematographer Rodney (Dan Baker-Moor) struggle to find a new approach. Hoping to add a little sex appeal, they persuade a dancer from a local burlesque house to screen test for them, but when things get a little out of hand the brow-beaten director finally sees red, both figuratively and literally – and soon enough they have a reel of a human body literally being hacked up and turned inside out. This footage, at last, gets the producer back on their side – and so Mandalor, and a rather more reluctant Rodney, set out to get more such footage for their next ‘gorrific’ feature.
At the time of writing, work is getting underway on Frankenstein Created Bikers, James Bickert’s Kickstarter-funded follow-up to Dear God No! (which, although I was unconvinced on its UK DVD release, I’ve since come to realise is probably the finest film made in the modern neo-grindhouse wave). One of Bickert’s big selling points is his insistence on shooting on film, pitching Frankenstein Created Bikers as probably the last horror film to be shot on 35mm. A sobering thought for sure – but sitting down to watch Lights Camera Blood!, I was sure Bickert couldn’t be alone. The cinematography seemed so authentic to the era, I was almost certain Doherty and co must have shot it on good old fashioned film. As such, I was truly quite surprised to learn Lights Camera Blood! was in fact shot in HD, with the old school look achieved via Final Cut and Adobe After Effects. Just goes to show it’s remarkable what can be achieved on readily available technology nowadays – but clearly not all practitioners have the same level of expertise and eye for detail as Doherty (also the director of photography and editor, along with Tim Doherty).
Nor is that where the visual treats and period-accurate details end. The film’s locations appear incredibly true to the era in terms of decor, from the garish wallpaper of Mandalor’s apartment set to the wood paneling on the walls of the producer’s office. The hair and clothing may occasionally give the game away, at times looking more like a costume shop’s hippy section than genuine 1960s apparel – but then there’s the one key component that really captures the heart (again, figuratively and literally) of HGL: the glorious bright red gore. Again in line with Lewis, the deaths themselves are relatively quick without too much emphasis on pain and anguish, but what happens to the corpses afterward is a different story, with numerous lengthy, lingering sequences of disembowelment, skinning, eyeball gouging and other such family-friendly activities. And if there’s so much as a frame of CG blood in here, I most definitely couldn’t spot it. All of it is so evocative of HGL, it almost seems an afterthought that Lights Camera Blood! is also littered with direct references to the master’s work; note Mandalor’s movie Brain Feast, a clear nod to Blood Feast, and a cape and hat costume very similar to that of the Wizard of Gore (and I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if there are more I failed to pick up on).
If any criticism can be made of Lights Camera Blood!, it would probably be that it’s a bit of a one-joke affair, and could easily prompt the question of whether the viewer might not prefer to just watch an original HGL movie instead. Ultimately though, Lights Camera Blood! is one of those films so filled with affection for the genre that I just can’t help liking it. It’s wittily acted and written, well-paced, and demonstrates that modern microbudget horror can take a great many more shapes and forms than we might expect. I certainly hope we see more from Kevin Doherty and company in the near future.
Find out more at KevinDohertyFilms.ca.