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29th February 2008
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28th March 2008

“Giallo Pages”, now *that*, friends, was a movie magazine!

Some great discussion on the boards this week. These forums are now the lifeblood of the site, a community that propelled Frightfest.com from being simply busy-once-a-year during that build up period from March to August when anticipation was at a high for the Bank Holiday weekend’s festivities, to a perennial haven for like-minded horror devotees and, now, ever-expanding circle of freaky friends. Which we all are, I like to think.

The forum is a consistent source of inspiration when doing these columns and deciding what to write about (all the better to transparently pad out my text amid an depressing ebb of interest-piquing genre DVD releases in the years (yes!) since this column has been going). One thing that caught my eye this week was the discussion of magazines: what we consume; why we consume it. There were, unsurprisingly, some interesting notions and, depressingly, some familiar refrains. Did we nerds really have it so good in the past?

I can't help but feel that it was the internet that [hyperbole] "destroyed" [/hyperbole] many of our beloved film 'zines -- the need to be constantly up-to-date yet unable to vie with the immediacy of online content means that ultimately, it's harder and harder for editors to provide a magazine, be it weekly or monthly or more, that’s full-to-bursting with unique, compelling content. Not to mention that with retrospective articles, it's all out there in the online ether anyway, a medium in which most of such a magazine's audience will be proficient and familiar. What this means is that a publisher is ultimately catering for a younger, less immediately savvy [read: well-versed in a vastness of film knowledge] crowd, which in turn means there's simply less for a seasoned reader to latch on to. That's the simple pragmatism of the magazine business, I guess: the readership generally goes from generation to generation, making us all feel very old.

Or maybe it *is* age that does it. A title like ‘Rue Morgue’ stays true to its readership and to its founder Rod Gudino’s (and now editor Jovanka Vuckovic’s) independent vision. I'd like to think, based on that ideal, it maintains a healthy challenge to the ever diluted Fangoria's hold on the market place (I say diluted, but that's just for me -- Fango still some superb writers in its fold Ryan Turek, Axelle Carolyn Marshall and some of the old guard too; it’s just the things they’re able to write about now lack the lustre of, say, the legendary “Creature Feature”s issue from early 90s or the incredible ‘Independent Horror’ issue that covered Scooter McRae and Leif Jonker and their ilk). But I think I'd be thinking wrong. I’m sure it’s as much of a struggle for them to make budget each month as any magazine not controlled by an Emap or like conglomerate.

Most of the truly great writers for the UK’s best zines, like Flesh & Blood, including those that inspired me -- the great Mitch Davis, the incomparable Harvey Fenton and the indefatigable legend that is John Martin among others -- are still plying their skilful trade in a number of ways and means. This means the passion and attitude and devilishly informative perspectives are still there, still visible and still consumable. And ‘Is It Uncut?” is still going, which truly warms my heart.

A while back, McEvoy himself began a discussion of our favourite websites, places here we go to consume our passions. Our own Scott Weinberg, John Fallon, Kim Morgan, Dennis Cozzallio, Devin Faraci, Jeremy “Mr Beaks” Smith, James Moran, Keith Brown: perhaps these incisive writers have replaced those who contributed to the collections of moulding paper in our parents’ attics; a stack of dark and wonderful detritus which I often long to revisit, to paw through and to delight in each and every lurid word.

Belated thanks, to all those guys (and gals). Please keep on writing.

Slinking across the shelves of stores across the land this week are:

“Asia Extreme Originals”: this week the ever-dependable Tartan release a box of oldies but goodies (well, not as old and good as Masaki Kobayashi’s “Kaidan”, maybe, but certainly cooking from the same recipe book) that, strangely, manage tell their own sad tale of the state of the horror genre today.

In the set we find “Ringu” and “Dark Water” two of the most successful examples of the Japanese new wave that swept of the genre in the early part of this century, complete with narrative traits dating back to the latter part of two centuries previous and no doubt beyond. So far so dutifully reverent to genuine legend. These were in turn, adapted by Hollywood as somewhat simplified and needlessly diluted English-language retreads. They are accompanied here by a newer piece of Nipponese terror, “Premonition”, itself recently adapted into a Sandra Bullock vehicle that failed to sate audiences or placate critics.

The remake grindstone just keeps on turning. And Tartan keep the home fires burning, making sure these fine original aren’t get lost in the subtitle-averse marketing onslaught of Hollywood. Good for them.

Controversially, I find ‘Dark Water’ the best of this makeshift trilogy. Not to denigrate the masterful “Ringu”, I simply find “Dark Water”s sodden heart gives it the razor’s edge over its more influential sibling.

There was a time Hideo Nakata was the frontrunner for the title of world’s Greatest Living Horror Director, perhaps only challenged by fellow countryman Kiyoshi “Kairo” Kurosawa. With two breakout genre titles creating euphoric squeals of both dread and delight in the West, Nakata’s mastery of form and frame was undoubted. This was a time long before he was lured to Hollywood for a rather fateful encounter with Ehren Kruger’s rather erratic screenplay for the Americanised “Ring 2”. In more contented times, however, he had made the beautifully rendered, heart breaking ghost story, “Dark Water”

One element missing from “Ringu” is here laid on in spades: tangible emotion. The socially coded austerity of Japanese culture is all too evident in the stately pace at which drama unfolds. Instead of the mounting dread of a cursed video or of a suicide-inducing ethereal population, we have real people -- real lives -- to build our hopes and sympathies upon. A slight and subtle departure, but one that pays off in abundance by final fade to black.

Belligerently described by some critics as “divorce court”-esque, the inciting incidents which see Hitomi Kukuri fighting for her daughter, Rio Kanno, are cleverly played out with the minimum of fuss, but the maximum of impact. Like all good stories, the first acts are threaded right through to the last, weaving into the narrative an intricate thematic tapestry of cyclical guilt, responsibility, culpability and sacrifice. All of which reveals an air of perpetual sadness, of childhood neglect and a delicate and devastating exploration of the terrible grief that is pent up in both the living and the dead. What dreadful forces such churning emotion can unleash.

It’s also fucking terrifying in places: like the lift, for instance.

With an ending as bleak and tragic and heartfelt as anything in recent memory, this really did raise the bar for intelligent shocks.

Or as CHUD’s Dave Davis once said: “it’s the scariest picture about a leaky pipe ever…”

“Nightwatch”: a brief, but shameless piece of self-promotion -- this week sees the release of Ole Bornedal’s grim psycho-thriller, an edgy slice of Euro-horror that was transposed to the US with Ewan McGregor in the lead and inexplicably mangled beyond belief by Miramax in 1998, around the same time “Phantoms” kicked out the jams. This is the first time the original Danish feature been released on DVD with decent English subs and I implore you to give it a day in court. If nothing else, it’s a rather grand piece of classic suspense seen by far too limited an audience.

Look out, too, for Bornedal’s extraordinary return to cinemas in July this year when Revolver brings the dark, delicious and gleeful;ly twisted “Just Another Love Story” to the UK. It’s brilliant.

“The Shining”: “what are you doing, Shelly?!” Perhaps the most unnerving moment in Kubrick’s potent reduction of Stephen King’s novel about an addict’s guilt to allegory for artistic mania occurs not in the feature itself but in daughter Vivian Kubrick’s luminous behind the scenes documentary. Poor Shelley Duval, late to the set and not in the right frame of mind to be chased by Jack, is badgered and psychologically battered by the bearded director until her gaunt eyes collapse into submissive tears of frustration and despair. It’s a revealing moment for both director and star; and the audience. It also brings a terrific performance out of the wan actress in what must have been a gruelling attempt to keep momentum on an ever-increasing build to the feral, sustained denouement.

You all know about this (cold, difficult, highly effective, frustrating, brilliant -- all of these things and more) touchstone of the genre and hopefully you’ll have the disc from years ago on which this featurette already resides. It’s terrific and just the sort of thing to which all DVD supplements should aspire: never outstaying its welcome (I love the “Lord Of The Rings” discs and “The Devils Rejects” accompanying feature, “30 Days In Hell” but really…brevity is underrated) and never self-satisfied. Next to “Full Tilt Boogie”, it’s one of the best making-of supps around. (Yes, I know “Full Tilt Boogie” is also feature length…I never said I was infallible.)

Hopefully this new rejigged, revamped disc in the recently spruced up (and now widescreen!) Kubrick Collection includes bonus features of equally heart-warming, nerve-jangling and glee-provoking reward. Available in both SD and BD.

“April Fools Day”: already well documented on the forums, this seems a rather pointless-retread of a rather sly before-its-time satire on slasher conventions that Fred Walton made in 1986.

This remake is pointless less in its narrative or technical aspects (I haven’t seen it yet) than due to the fact that, in a weary post-‘Scream’, post-endless-snarky-“Scream”-rip-offs world, is there really any great skill or reward in tackling the genre on in such obvious and literal terms? If you’re Michael Haneke maybe (see next week’s “Funny Games”), but I doubt this is he or anything like he.

“The Tripper” a sincere, if problematic and ultimately misjudged pet project of one-time ‘Scream’-schlub David Arquette, it’s probably neither complimentary or entirely critical to say that it finds itself right at home with the current fad for all things retro (but ‘retro’ in that polished, safe, never-truly-unhinged fashion possessed by all those films which aspire to the 70s feel, but never really achieve it). Gory, yes, fun certainly and a better use of the mask of an ex-President of the United States than the overrated “Point Break”, but still, ultimately, a let down from someone who you’d have thought would have injected a truly unique and bizarre sensibility. Perhaps we’ll have to wait until someone manages to persuade Crispin Glover’s to unleash his parade of gothic and surreal shockers for something like that to happen.

From such an artistically diverse clan, it’s unsurprising this particular Arquette is far from the first to enjoy rewarding genre association: sister Patricia starred in the best of the Elm Street sequels, ‘Dream Warriors’, before hot-footing it, via execrable possession shocker ‘Stigmata’ to inexplicable televisual success in the curiously popular ‘Medium’; Rosanna made ‘Black Rainbow’ a standout entry in the late 80s/early 90s vogue for psychic horror pictures (Mike Hodges’ hokey but effective supernatural drama possessed all the atmosphere the Zach Galligan vehicle ‘Psychic’ and Ally Sheedy’s ‘Fear’ so lacked). Perhaps most interesting of all though, before he became gothed-up Good-Guy-bait in ‘Bride Of Chucky’, brother Alexis was in a terrific little indie-chiller from New Zealand called “Jack Be Nimble”. Now there’s a re-release I’d like to see happen.