22nd January 2009

Note-worthy new releases are in as meagre supply as Mormon liquor licenses this week.

Just “Eden Lake”, one of the hits of Frightfest 2008, invades retailer shelves, like a hoodie with a grudge. It can be neatly summed up thus: a crackling class-drawn duel of dulled moral senses and sharpened knives. Buy it.

To make up for such lack, we return, with tremulous anticipation to:

TOP WHAT ?

Top 5 B & W Horror films For Beginners.

Without wishing to sound patronising (Me? Never…!), issues of both foreignness and colour are, like a microcosmic genre version of the BNP, a sticking point for a proportion of less seasoned viewers. Not that this refers in any way to you, dear reader; just by virtue of visiting Frightfest, your discernment is beyond reproach. However, it cannot be ignored how well our beloved “Let The Right One In” may fair vs. a behemoth like “My Bloody Valentine 3D”. Within the box office results lies empirical evidence that full-bloodied English language is what ticks the boxes for most genre fans on most occasions.

There are the exceptions that prove the rule, of course. Despite delivering a minor spear in the side of “Pyscho” that incurred incandescent rage of the usually mild mannered voor last week, it’s still a robust genre giant without which no sane fan should attempt to raft the white waters of the horror scene. And to say that Japan’s “Ringu” and “Audition” caused a stir in fantasy film is a bit like saying Freddy Krueger wasn’t a fan of the older lady.

These, though, are pictures which have been beaten to death by the cultural elite to the point that they’re almost bereft of the thrill of discovery by those approaching the genre unawares. Is there any even neophyte fan who is unsure the secret behind “Psycho”, or what Sadako (her what comes out of a TV screen) looks like or what the phrase “kiri kiri kiri” either means or is a precursor to?

So in the spirit of invigorating discovery, these are 5 Black & White gems that -- as happened with me when I first encountered them -- would start any burgeoning fan of cinema’s most profound horrors out on a very dark and sinister road.

1) “Cat People” (1942) Val Lewton, the master of the frugal fright, teamed with, amongst many others, that exemplary yet most humble of filmmakers Jacques Tourneur on a number of occasions during RKO’s quietly hysterical runs of the b-movie horror-thrillers in the 1940s. Perhaps not their partnership’s most complex hour (and a bit), but certainly their most iconic, was “Cat People”.

Beleaguered by what may or may not be a sorority of ancient shape-shifters, delicate, dark and mysterious ingénue Simone Simon’s mind begins to unravel after a chance meeting with Kent Smith’s alluring stranger in a New York City zoo. This encounter arouses passion within her, the likes of which she is experiencing for the very first time in this metropolis brimming with glamorous iniquity.

Like the best genre films of the era it smuggled genuine insight and emotional intelligence in amongst the tightly wound story and expertly wrangled scares. It’s as much a precursor to “Ginger Snaps” as it is to Paul Schrader’s histrionic remake in its depiction of the ferocity of both female empowerment and unbridled sexuality.

A testament, too, to the pure cinema coursing through Tourneur’s veins, “Cat People”’s concoction of crisp photography and devilishly wily sound design makes it a coolly inviting shocker, the likes of which we see all too rarely in these times of prolific and ostentatious sturm und drang.

2) “The Spiral Staircase” (1945) The giallo’s brand of visual fetishism, and particularly the stark motif of the black gloves, found its way into cinema further back than the usually cited benchmark of “Blood & Black Lace”. Most likely via Edgar Wallace’s krimi novels, the relative mainstream of Robert Siodmak’s terrifying and elegant 1946 picture, “The Spiral Staricase” is the true godfather of the Italian version of the slasher.

In a New England town in the early 1900s a young woman, traumatised in her youth so that she is no longer able to speak, lives with and cares for a grand old rich maid in an imposingly gothic mansion. Also living there is a small assemblage of close and not so close family, associates and employees. One dark and stormy night, after the brutal murders of a series crippled and infirmed damsels have rocked the small community, the isolated house is invaded by the assailant. A mute girl, dark house, crazed killer; it’s a paradigm of delightful proportions.

 As atmospheric as it is astutely honed, the mystery is less labyrinthine than, say, a standard Poirot potboiler yet the journey to final unmasking of a kinky, black-gloved villain driven by furiously perverse devises and desires to wring a pretty neck is packed with delightful menace. The fact “The Spiral Staircase” remains so unsung, while any of the entertaining but flighty Vorhees sequels remain evergreen fan favourites, is both a relative shame and a distinct puzzle.

 Beautifully shot in austere black and white (and the odd frenetic burst of gothic tempest) by Nicholas Musuraca, is this the first great slasher picture in American cinema? You could very well say it. There are few from any time in the genre’s history as dripping with shadowy peril and impeccable dread. Track it down

3) The Haunting (1963)

Robert Wise’s seminal shocker is less famous for what you do see than for what you so cleverly do not. Though not made for Val Lewton, “The Haunting” was, like the best of the enterprising producer’s pictures, a symphony of sound and cunning vision complimenting each other perfectly. (Wise should know what he’s working with -- he served as co-director on Lewton’s “Curse Of The Cat People” and was a staff editor at the studio Lewton called home during that time, RKO). Wise hid his horror in the shadows, just far enough away that you could feel its fetid breath on the nape of your neck but never close enough to fully make out the horror of what was, perhaps, reaching out toward you with ethereal, icy fingers.

The film is based on Shirley Jackson’s uncomplicated tale of four volunteers, sequestered by an unethical doctor to take part in a controversial experiment into the ghostly and ghastly at Hill House. Yet, for all its cacophonous rumblings and exquisite shocks, the film is a character piece at heart. It just that the character of the piece in question is as much the cavernous, woeful mansion as it is the subjects themselves. Myths, the power of suggestion, prejudice, will, trust and resolve all come under intense scrutiny as the house begins to torment the inner being of all who have dared enter and question its reputation as a hive of paranormal activity.

As Wise showed with his and co-director Gunther von Fritsch’s “Cat People” follow-up, he is as concerned with the innate, contradictory psychology of his characters as he is with scaring the wits out of them. “The Haunting” does this from the vey first sequence in which we learn of the terrible history of Hill House: here, a simple, hanging body engenders as much dread and chilling portent as “Psycho”’s semi-opaque shower curtain.

“The Haunting” is one of those pictures for which is a genuine dare to sit through in a dark house…on your own. Try it; it’s invigorating to say the least.

4) Curse/Night Of The Demon (1957) The currency in which Jacques Tourneur’s sensational chiller trades is that of countless other TV shows and pictures during the 90 or more years since the short story on which it was based was written. Philosophically astute tales of dread and the macabre such as those written by “Runes” author M.R. James (upon who’s short story “Night Of The Demon” is based) have unwittingly inspired a groundswell of popular fictions from “The X Files” to the all pervasive modern J-Horror trend (though there’s a huge crossover between Asia’s own classic breed of folk tales which James and his ilk were imagining concurrently for western readers). “Night Of The Demon” remains, for me, the zenith of thrilling supernatural horror.

Hoax busting Dr John Holden (a wonderfully stony-faced Dana Andrews), traveling to the UK to attend a paranormal psychology symposium, becomes embroiled in a perilous quest to disprove some unnerving rumours regarding cult-courting aristocrat Juston Kerswell (a unsettlingly pleasant looking Niall MacGinnis). It appears Kerswell is in possession of as an inscribed parchment capable of unleashing madness and perhaps far more tangible horrors upon anyone whom he deems impertinent enough to try and discredit him and his beliefs. For professional skeptic Holden this is, of course, too much of a tantalisingly dangled carrot to possibly ignore. Something deeply wicked that way lies…

“Night…” is as much about man’s proclivity for unbelief and incredulity in the face of overt evil -- such as this story’s quietly maniacal shaman Julian Kerswell -- as his fragility in the face of the mere suspicion. It’s this last notion that drives the short story “…Runes” and this liberal adaptation. It’s an exquisitely intelligent and cynical exploration of a very human condition.

 Auspicious monster appearance aside, the picture combines palm-dampening alarm, fiendish plotting and a raft of superb character acting to produce a British picture every bit as chilling as “The Wicker Man”, “The Shining”, “Don’t Look Now” or any other touchstone of 20th century terror film. All delivered with the same gothic panache Tourneur effortlessly elicited for his Val Lewton pictures at RKO a decade earlier. One of the unsung heroes of genre film, a name often lost amid the often obstreperous clamour produced around names such as James Whale, Alfred Hitchcock, Mario Bava and George Romero, Tourneur was, by his own modest admission, like “a carpenter using tools to construct what he was hired to build”. And Michelangelo was simply handy with a paintbrush.

No horror fan should be without this in their library. It’s everything a great horror film -- scratch that, a “great film” -- should be. Endlessly rewarding, it should be a required rebuttal to those who mistakenly think that old black and white pictures can’t be as thrilling as those new ones made in colour.

5) Paranoiac (1963)

An indulgently derivative concoction, this, from the post-classical years of Britain’s Technicolour horror pioneers, Hammer Studios. “Paranoiac” was part of an effort by resident screenwriter Jimmy Sangster to create a new brand of indelible shock for which the studio was famous. Only here, he would do it with less money and more stark realism than was ever present in the arch theatricality of their infamously gothic takes on the classic “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” tales.

Most probably inspired by both 1955’s grand “Les Diaboliques” and Robert Bloch’s psychoanalytically-based terror, Sangster set about creating a series of intricately plotted twist-in-the-tale yarns, full of boisterous playboys and duplicitous guardians perhaps trying to drive simpering hysterics like Susan Strasberg out of their pretty little minds. They’re the kind of upper-middle class, conniving, bickering reprobates Mario Bava would finally set at each other’s throats in “Twitch Of The Death Nerve”.

“Paranoiac” was the second of these tight, monochromatic nerve-janglers (after 1961’s “Taste Of Fear” from the terrifically named director of “The Nanny”, Seth Holt). This one starred an impossibly beautiful Oliver Reed in fine form as a steaming drunk playboy and was directed by famed cinematographer Freddie Francis.

Even with its spasms of far-fetched melodrama, “Paranoiac” manages to contain the most authentically terrifying image of the Sangster’s series (aside from the one of Reed beating up his own reflection in a pond). A nerve-jangled Janette Scott a) thinking that the ghost of the brother she has been led to believe she killed is making nightly visitations to the family crypt and b) wrestling with falling in love with an imposter claiming to *be* that dead brother, peers through the small window of the chapel one night. There, she spies a figure hunched over a wheezing pipe organ….but fails to see the even more hunched figure in the foreground who suddenly whips around to face her. The image of a death-masked choir boy/acolyte with black pits for eyes stalking toward the camera is a bona fide shocker.

Given his later pedigree, it’s perhaps no wonder Francis, a master visual stylist, could come up with such an indelible and legitimately unnerving image amid what is essentially a rather hokey little tale. But it’s those baroque flourishes which make this precursor to the likes of Roald Dahl’s “Tales Of The Unexpected” such roaring good fun. It’s a sterling antidote to the wrongly-held belief by viewers raised on modern genre cinema that all Hammer films were stuffy period dramas enlivened with sporadic bursts of mildly graphic spectacle.