22nd March 2010

‘Gore In The Store’ (which I must admit I realised, about one week after the second edition went online, should have been called ‘The Gore In Store’ if the name was going to make any sense) is now in the capable hands of the people. Vox populi, and probably all the better for it.

But I’m still here. Sorry. Welcome to my regular Good Scream.

I wish Kevin was here to read it.

Three Films By Larry Fessenden

As driven as Roger Corman; as authentic as John Cassavetes; as subversive, bold and transgressive as Stuart Gordon. In the early 1990s rush of independent film revelry, while the world was rightly fawning over the collective visions of a new band(e) of vibrant, cine-smart filmmakers -- among their number Allison Anders, Whit Stillman, Richard Linklater and, of course, Quentin Tarantino -- one name was lost in furore over the free ideals, cultured formalism and rampant creative frivolity of this post-Soderbergh Sundance set. The name was Larry Fessenden.

It would be disingenuous to ever imagine that he would *really* be included on such a striking role-call. Yet looking back at the down-and-dirty-pictures epoch with eyes that are two decades older, it’s strange that Fessenden’s dramatically bold, genuinely unkempt mindset wasn’t at least latched upon with the same fervour that champions of the indie movement afforded less-resilient talents like Nick Gomez or Alexandre Rockwell.

Three pictures in particular, a trio that would become Fessenden’s Trilogy Of Terror, sum up his slightly feverish outlook on the world. It’s a world stuck between twin pillars: ennui at the emotional upheavals of simply living in contemporary society; and a basic fear of it. The world is a deeply unsettling place and those who inhabit it make it so.

I wrote in my Underrated Film of the 21st Century column in July of last year about the third of these films, WENDIGO. Released in 2001, WENDIGO was the final part in the Trilogy Of Terror. These were a series of otherwise unrelated films that took on horror archetypes, reinventing them in a smart, sharp fashion that bridged their literary pasts with their more prevalent (and over-exposed) cinematic present.

WENDIGO was, to all intents and purposes, his Golem picture wherein a family in the embryonic stages of marital discontent are terrorised by something from within the woods in which they are vacationing. The more unnerving intimation is that what’s terrorising them is perhaps made from those woods.

WENDIGO enveloped the essential primal fear which the enduring Jewish anthropomorphic talisman possessed, but from a distinctly pagan perspective. This tree-demon seems generated by the awesome power of nature itself; the rural beasts of nature striking back at the urban(e) beasts from the city.

Deconstructing the iconoclasm of fear, Fessenden asks what it takes for an icon, be it beast or bogeyman, to survive in a contemporary age where everything is accessible, where knowledge is a mouse-click away and where fear and superstition have been usurped by reason and rationale born of technology and science. Out in the wintery wild woods, none of the trappings of modern civilisation can be relied upon to explain the uncanny occurrences that terrorise our heroes. The journey that follows, complete with a terrific Quay Brothers/Jan Svankmeyer-style stop-motion monster, is as neat and nihilistic as anything from the glory days of Val Lewton’s tenure at RKO.

WENDIGO was a technically polished production, the most mainstream yet from the remarkably industrious Fessenden and his Glass Eye Pix production outfit and a move away from the feel of his earlier pictures. These initial features, after a series of shorts, may have been more rough hewn but they were no less invigorating, imaginative or fiercely intelligent, traits which more visible low budget horror pictures of the early 90s were more willing to spurn in favour of gore gags, T&A and ever more quip-laden post-modernism (taking more obvious cues from that previously mentioned auspicious list of cine-savvy filmmakers from which Fessenden was noticeably absent).

His first feature was 1991’s NO TELLING. Ostensibly a retelling of FRANKENSTEIN (by way of Herbert West) it sees a modern couple, Lillian and Geoffrey, spurn the lights of the city for the quiet life in the country. She’s a free-spirited artist; he’s a research scientist with some deeply divided ethics on the treatment of animals in the quest for an elusive and lucrative grant. Muddying the waters with dramatic tension is a nefarious conglomerate raping both the land and the health of local farmers -- forerunning such big budget portraits of scandalous corporate misdemeanour as A CIVIL ACTION and THE RAINMAKER. Lillian befriends activist and neighbour, Alex, whose job it is to monitor and take action against the hazardous chemical influx on behalf of his fellow citizens. (And, like a loveably hippy dippy liberal, promote organic farming! This was before it became hip to do that very thing, I suppose.)

Naturally the mad doctor’s hubristic quest gets the better of him and before the credits roll, more than a little blood has been spilled in the fight to rectify the natural order of things.

If it sounds didactic for a horror film, well, to some extent that’s true. Somewhat crude but imaginatively shot, it’s a picture of its time -- the early 90s when such environmental concerns were at an apex of scientific advancement and popular activism -- but also a picture of a very old fashioned persuasion.

Like another low-budget maven I’ve championed at Frightfest, Jeff Lieberman, Fessenden is a cultivated genre fan and nowhere is this more evident than in NO TELLING, which owes as much to the stern-faced sci-fi pictures of the 1960s and 1970s as it does to the more apparent mad scientists beloved of gothic literature.

Somewhere between 1950s sci fi of THEM and the following decades’ PHASE IV and THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, sci-fi/horror pictures became less hysterical and more gravely austere. As society came to terms with the 20th century’s fantastical technological progressions, things that were once the stuff of crazy, b-movie nightmares were an empirical reality. The 20th century’s greatest irony is surely never forgotten; that as advances of modern science brought about wonders of hi-tech communication, healthcare, and commerce, the Faustian pact meant there was an exponential descent into chaos, suspicion and conspiracy as we irrevocably lost our collective innocence. As the Cold War descended and we progressed past Korea, past the Bay Of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, past Vietnam and Nixon, society realised that just because a government was in power, they and their associates weren’t necessarily doing things in the best interests of the people. They weren’t to be trusted. Nowhere was this paranoia more viscerally exploited than in genre film.

NO TELLING, though a contained, intimate shocker, honours this inquisitive, intelligent fiction of mistrust in a quietly compelling manner.

Perhaps the most interesting of Fessenden’s Trilogy Of Terror is the least traditionally “horror”. 1996’s HABIT is a modern day retelling (and regendering) of the basic Dracula story in which Sam, an out of work actor and bar manager in the bustling artistic haven of Greenwich Village, is seduced by a predatory female partygoer. It is written, directed and edited by and stars Larry Fessenden himself.

A died-in-the-wool thespian before he turned to directing, all Fessenden’s projects from then until now are marked by a fidelity to basic craft, from the ground up. This means his pictures are the best produced be on such meagre means; there was no frazzled consumer video once this low budget auteur got into feature length, it seems like 16mm all the way, which immediately marks him out from other DIY filmmakers of the era like J.R. Bookwalter or Scooter McCrae. Fessenden’s pictures also foreground performance and are devoid of breathless model types, stilted best friends or smug teens awaiting ghastly and/or supernatural reprimand. They feature actors culled from Fessenden’s old theatrical troupe as ordinary people in mostly extraordinary circumstances. The nature of “ordinary” is somewhat subjective but it’s what drives Fessenden’s work. The performances maybe stylised, verging on melodrama, but they’re emotionally true, reacting to the horrors seeping into everyday situations as characters in an Abel Ferrara picture might: baroque, heightened, but recognisably (and fallibly) human.

Fessenden, as the tragic Sam, is an intriguing presence. In this fifteen year old picture, he has the dangerous, insouciant swagger of Jack Nicholson through which we glimpse the same brand of loveable, coiled mania with which Bill Paxton endears his many fans: he’s like the sensitive, beatnik brother of NEAR DARK’s Severin.

HABIT is a simple tale of ‘guy meets ghoul’ that follows in the boot-heel prints of CRONOS and THE ADDICTION to present a filth-encrusted urban fairytale. While it lacks the gothic poetry of the former, it embraces the endearingly pompous gravity of the latter as Sam’s slight wastrel of an artistic schlub descends into the darkness of his own curious undoing. It also does -- as indeed all of Fessenden’s pictures do -- what Del Toro and Ferrara’s pictures both achieve so skilfully: edging the horror from that darkness into the light of the everyday.

When we meet Sam, he has lost the unconditional love of a parent (his father’s just died) and the conditional love of a neglected now-ex girlfriend; he’s the perfect vampire prey, the victim of his own pathetic desire to be needed. Fessenden’s spare, emotive screenplay equates emotional isolation with the isolation a monster might feel from humanity and our base securities of love, of family, of warmth and reliance on kindness and benevolence. When we first meet Sam, he’s a shambles, but he’s hard-working, affable and open. When he quickly realises how cut off he is, that’s when the horror takes him.

New York, the city that never sleeps, is as much of a dark mistress as Anna the vampire who arrives (in one of the picture’s frequent beautifully elegiac shots) in the Hudson on a ship that might as well have The Demeter emblazoned on it decrepit hull. It appears that New York’s intrinsic allure is as irresistible as any creature of the night since Anna’s lusty initiation of Sam includes spontaneous sex in memorable NYC landmarks, on funky tenement rooftops with a view to die for, and, in one memorable equating of sex and death, in a downtown medical centre as the perpetual wail of ambulance sirens deposits corpses within sniffing distance of the secreted couple’s merry rutting.

There’s a gentle, rumpled elegance to Fessenden’s gaze, both literally as actor and figuratively as director. Playing the doleful victim, his strong presence lends weight to the filmmaker’s recapitulations of some enthusiastically recalled cult moments; from WOLFEN’s baying dogs to KING OF NEW YORK’s mournful neon sleaze to SALEM’S LOT’s repugnant nocturnal spooks (given a THE SHINING make-over here).

All doesn’t end well, as you might imagine, but in line with Fessenden’s fidelity to the emotional truth of an unreal situation it’s with quiet resignation, rather than an unambiguous or gratuitous monster show, that the story reaches its climax. Better than most vampire films of the 21st century, HABIT is an invigorating, wonderfully scored minor key treasure.

Only post-WENDIGO did Fessenden really gain fair acknowledgment as a filmmaker, and even then quite marginally. His early work is unavailable in the UK (or outside of the US, I think) but WENDIGO (High Fliers) and THE LAST WINTER (Revolver) are on Region 2 DVD and out-of-print Collector’s Editions of both HABIT and NO TELLING can be tracked down in the US on the Fox Lorber label. To sweeten the deal, they both contain terrifically engaging ‘Making of…’ features in the tradition of Robert Rodriguez’s invaluable Film Schools.

Vindication for all that time in the wilderness may soon payoff as Fessenden has also been selected by Del Toro and the producers of THE ORPHANAGE to bring that tale to the screen in the inevitable and now much more intriguing English language remake.

Seen as a quirky on-screen presence in an odd assortment of roles from SESSION 9 and I SELL THE DEAD to BROKEN FLOWERS and HEADSPACE, it’s Fessenden’s unrelenting dedication to low-budget cinema as producer with Glass Eye Pix and to fostering nascent talent from his New York base that is his legacy.

At very least, this means we continue to experience films from Ti West, Jim Mickle and Greg McClean, to name just three Glass Eye Pix alumni. But so much more, it means Fessenden’s stamp on genre film remains assured.

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