5th January 2009

Merry New Year, Happy Hanukah, Belated Halloween. To all those of some conviction, be it spiritual or secular, welcome to 2009 and to a renewed and regular service of all things GITSy. You lucky sprites.

ON THE SHELF

Beyond the stultifying array of Work Out, Fitness and Colonic Irrigation (really? No. But just imagine!) DVDs currently warping what’s left of high street retailer’s shelves this month, it’s not surprising to find just a couple of genre releases on this week’s agenda.

So, for all those with a few pennies to spare after a blowout of A/V bargains (if the message boards are any indication), you may approach with lust/caution, the following:

Steel Trap: Lionsgate, one of the industry’s most consistent and prolific proponents of new genre talent to DVD, unleash what appears to be another in a long line of low budget, survival horror pictures designed with the “Saw”-fan in mind. Or at least the quite nifty packaging would have you believe.

It’s a homespun production (it stars a plethora of UK TV performers, fresh-faced but relative veterans in the Georgina Rylance/‘Dr Who’ Matt Smith vein) from neophyte feature filmmaker Cámara wand possesses, presumably, at least modest ambitions to entertain an audience so obviously hungry for grim thrills. And there’s nothing wrong with that: practically every horror hero we have began with such opportunistic aspirations.

Perhaps there’s nothing remotely “torturous” or “porn”-like within. But the marketing department wouldn’t want that rumour to get around if there’s money to be made from the disposable income of the loyal horror fan. And isn’t that ethos at the very heart of exploitation cinema itself? It has always been thus, from the verbal warning on behalf of Mr Carl Laemmle at the opening of “Frankenstein” to William Castle’s insurance contract with Lloyds Of London protecting those audience members willing to subject themselves to the horrors of his 1958 picture “Macabre”.

“Steel Trap” was released on the Dimension Extreme label in the US, it has therefore been aligned with a host of similarly fine yet hyperbolised examples of a variety of genres: from the UK’s “The Zombie Diaries” to France’s “Inside” to the USA’s “Reeker 2” to Denmark’s “The Substitute”. Each is a very different beast and the sheer breadth of sub-genre, tone and filmmaking technique is an indication of, not only the reason for such in-your-face and (perhaps unfairly labelled as) shameless marketing, but the major difficulties such productions face: namely, that they are rather a lot of them.

Again, it has always been thus. But, before the video age (and some might say even during its embyonic, genre-heavy years in the early 1980s), there has never been the proliferation of titles, formats, distribution platforms or ease with which to access any of them rendered by the internet age. Competition has never been more frenzied. This is true for cinema in general, regardless off genre, yet perhaps none more so than those genres whose target audience is most immersed in this enabling technology.

Filmmaking is tough; audiences even more so. It’s no surprise the marketing of and to these two things is often as open and direct as the sleeves with which we’re assailed weekly by yet another genre DVD vying for our UK pounds.

You buy ’em, they’ll sell and others will continue making them. Luis ámara is no different to Mike Bartlett and Kevin Gates, Adam Mason and Jake West; these guys want to illicit thrills and instigate chills in the best, most industrious way they know how and can afford. And an equally industrious distributor will be there to unleash them the most appropriate way they know how be it “Steel Trap”, “Five Across The Eyes”, “Zombie Diaries”, “Frontieres” or “The Living And The Dead”. For the perpetuation of our genre, we can do no more than wish them the best of luck.

Psycho/Psycho II/Psycho III/Psycho IV

If not the granddaddy of slasher pictures (this honour might well lie with Hitchcock’s own “The Lodger” with its iconic opening quasi set-piece kill so redolent of the ‘slasher’ genre’s main gambit or Robert Siodmak’s ‘The Spiral Staircase’, though this is more of a proto-giallo) it’s certainly the malevolent patron saint. It’s also arguably one of the essential ten pictures with which every burgeoning horror fan should be familiar at the outset of their long journey into darkness.

A succinct masterclass in both sound and vision, “Psycho”’s legendary suspense and shock spring from a clinical construction and execution of that most highly attuned sense of cinema so famously possessed by Hitchcock. For scholars, it’s a textbook example of the storyboard and how to map out a film; for historians, it’s where horror became less a ghoulish gimmick or gothic indulgence and more a precise exercise in milking the genuine, excitable terror of an audience; for that audience, it’s a machine designed to thrill.

And to reproach a sacred cow for a moment, it is a machine that is almost too clinical.

Never has Hitchcock proved more singularly precise than in this exercise in the mechanics of suspense. Eschewing the more deft psychological examinations that his characters underwent in pieces like “Notorious”, “Shadow Of A Doubt” or “Strangers On A Train”, “Psycho” is peopled with ciphers for his puppetry of the audience. It’s at once marvellous to behold, yet frustrating to experience in the midst of over a decade’s worth of other masterpieces.

Strip away the mechanics of technique so precisely honed by Hitchcock (not to mention Herrmann’s sensational, indispensable score) and there is little entertainment of any great depth to be had beyond the (terrific) shocking central gimmick. It’s a slight, terribly downbeat tale -- barely more than a short story’s worth on screen -- with little narrative resolution or climactic catharsis to make whooping noises about. Indeed, the spurious psychiatric wrap-up that fills in the audience on the very cursory workings of Norman Bates’ unravelled mind, coming on like nothing so much as an extremely dry Rod Serling, remains a fatally contentious issue which denies the picture status as a work of true cinema genius like Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” or “Rear Window”. Unlike later ‘slasher’ pictures, it relies less on vanquishing a fictional bogeyman than constructing a simply plausible one. In that way, screenwriter Joseph Stefano’s adaptation of Robert Bloch’s novel presages “Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer” or “10 Rillington Place” as much as it does “Friday The 13th”.

That said, assuaging these criticisms to almost insignificance is an overwhelming barrage of pitch perfect elements of the picture’s creation that pummels the viewer into virtual submission. Rewatching “Psycho”, one has no doubt they are being manipulated within an inch of utter excess (not a first for a Hitchcock picture by any means). But with performances of both unnerving urgency and great sincerity from Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins as the flawed Marion and Norman and with such impeccable technical and artistic credentials, there little for which to criticise “Psycho” as a work of pure and wonderful cinema.

Released many times before, this edition is not particularly timely -- no specific anniversary springs to mind of either the novel, film or its sequels or of Hitchcock himself. It’s nonetheless a terrific opportunity to pick up one of the most interesting of genre series at a good price in snazzy steel book packaging.

For purists, there may be little to gain from three follow-ups to such a titan of the genre, but for the adventurous horror fan there is, at worst, much amiable schlock to found within Richard Franklin/Anthony Perkins/Mick Garris’s belated sequels and at best, some gleefully sly subversion and affection for the mechanics at play in our beloved genre. Written by, in sequence, Tom Holland (“Fright Night”), Charles Edward Pogue (Cronenberg’s “The Fly”) and Joseph Stefano himself, it’s a quite fascinating evolution of “Psycho”’s truly intriguing addition to the landscape of horror (beyond the mere brilliance of the shower set piece), the character of Norman Bates: for all the psychiatric postscripts and hyperbolised childhood incidents, a very human psycho.

TOP WHAT?

Perhaps to provoke some discussion but more often than not to fling my own cinematic profligacy in your general direction with merciless abandon, this is the first of what will be a weekly Top 5: ghosts, kills, awful uses of CGI, animal maulings…read on.

Top 6 Horror Films Which Should Have Nominated For One Of The Big 5 Academy Awards

Since Awards season is officially upon us, and genre fans love to grumble about the relative ousting of horror’s preeminent titles come ceremony time, if “Silence”/”Exorcist” make the grade, what other, less adulated greats of horror should have been rewarded (should such things, you know, actually matter):

1) “Seven”:

Should have been nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor

Fincher’s bravura dark noir sliced through the decade’s already artistically heightened sense of the horrific (see “Silence Of The Lambs”) to cement the truly ghoulish’s place in the mainstream firmament. In some ways its box office success laid the foundations for audiences to embrace a loving tribute to a wayward and marginal genre like ‘Scream’, thus making horror almost legitimate (for better or for worse). It’s one of the many reasons “Seven” really “matters”.

Despite reigning supreme over most other horror films of the year, it was particularly grievous that “Seven”’s superb and incontrovertibly influential direction, along with its writing and acting (from both male leads, its villain and a never-better Gwyneth Paltrow), was not enough to turn heads away from the extraordinarily conventional “Braveheart”, “Il Postino”, “Apollo 13” & “Sense & Sensibility”, the heavy hitters at that year’s Academy Awards. “Babe” was good though.

2. “Don’t Look Now “

Should have been nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director ,Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress.

Considering it was nominated for 6 BAFTA Awards including Best Film, Director, Actor and Actress and won the BAFTA for Best Cinematography, it’s a semi-tragedy that this most beautiful and heartfelt of all genre pictures wasn’t granted at least a passing mention alongside the international industry’s “best” of 1973.

Less egregious was the fact that, in its place, we had the most vital genre candidate, “The Exorcist” which at least walked away with an actual award. Still, also-ran Best Picture nominees “Touch Of Class” and “American Graffiti” are rarely hailed as touchstones of the decade. Winner “The Sting” is fine fun and it’s good to see the heavy quasi-horror of “Cries & Whispers” embraced in so popular a fashion.

3. “The Wicker Man”

Should have been nominated for: Best Screenplay

Rarely has a screenplay of any genre been so utterly entrancing in it hideously inevitable tragedy. A strange fruit, to be sure but full to brim with invention, character, tightly wound mystery and unique atmosphere. Problematic distribution most likely hindered it visibility at large and like “Seven” years later, it was completely ignored. The irony being it played as a supporting feature to the similarly snubbed “Don’t Look Now”. Again, “The Exorcist” nearly makes up for that year’s double whammy.

4. “Alien”

Should have been nominated for: Best and Best Screenplay.

At the a more humanist end of the 1970s, there was little room for dark futurism in voting body’s hearts that were no doubt awash with “Kramer vs. Kramer”’s calamity, “All That Jazz”’s eccentricity, “Apocalypse Now”’s full tilt feverishness and the needy everyman heroics and socialism of “Breaking Away” & “Norma Rae”. Too bad, as a more tautly wound yarn of suspense and diabolical tension and breathtakingly oppressive and memorably propulsive direction would not been seen in American film until, arguably, James Cameron’s “Terminator” strode on screen.

5. “Peeping Tom”

Should have been nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor.

The year that saw “Psycho” nominated for a deuce-ace of awards, the more intricate, deft and alluring psycho drama of the year was, quite amazingly from a contemporary vantage point, a critical and commercial dud. Only time and Martin Scorsese would rescue Michael Powell’s deeply unsettling tale of Teutonic terror (taking into account the odd but thoroughly successful casting of Karl-Heinz Boehm as Mark Lewis) from the annals of history’s forgotten gems.

It’s no stretch to say that, while lacking the stark impact of “Psycho”’s technical brilliance, “Peeping Tom”’s powerful screenplay, absorbing, troubling direction and icy performances easily outclass the empty spectacle of “The Alamo” notably out of place alongside “Elmer Gantry” “Sons & Lovers”, “The Sundowners” and “The Apartment” for the year’s best picture.

Discuss.

Back to
Blog Central