In the Mouth of Madness (1995)

John Carpenter has made some impressive films. Halloween (1978) is simply a flawless chiller, still remembered and emulated. I’ve already reviewed The Thing (1982), which is both suspenseful and has an alien that’s truly alien — a rarity for film and TV, which generally prefers putting a bumpy forehead on an actor. Starman (1984) is a warm-hearted and inventive science-fiction film, and Big Trouble in Little China (1986) an unpredictable, tremendously fun popcorn action film, provided you don’t want it to meet many expectations — it’s a bit of a unique mix.

That last film took a beating from critics who declined to get caught up in the fun. It did fairly poorly at the box office, and reportedly resulted in Carpenter deciding he’d no longer make films for Hollywood studios.  They Live (1988) takes a somewhat bitter but pointed stab at the money-hungry, suggesting that the greedy capitalists out to put profit ahead of the planet are in fact heartless aliens in disguise, and you can find them out simply by looking around with specially treated sunglasses. The main character puts a monkey wrench in the works but is shot in the process and lies back to relish giving the aliens the finger as he dies. The film would be heavy-handed, but it manages to be a lot of fun along the way.

In the Mouth of Madness suffers from taking itself a little too seriously, by contrast, as well as not deciding what it wants to be about. Sam Neill plays John Trent, an insurance fraud investigator hired by a publisher to find out what happened to Sutter Kane, an immensely popular horror author — he disappeared and so did his latest manuscript. It’s an intriguing beginning. And there’s no need to spell out the comparison to Stephen King, though unfortunately one character does. A flashback to Trent making a man squirm because of a fraudulent claim has little connection to anything, and feels oddly situated in the film. There’s one (that’s one, folks) effective scene, as Trent drives to the obscure New England town where he might find Cane — we see a young man on a bicycle ahead in the middle of the road, but at first can only make out the flash of the headlights on his reflectors. The car passes the man, and Carpenter captures the second that the man and car are next to each other, the boy looking over with a strange, disconnected expression before fading into the darkness and glow of the tail-lights.

Not long after this, the madness presented begins to have only one form: seeing everyone as a demon, from police officers to charming little old ladies.  A demon with an axe (they’re oh-so fond of the axes) runs out into the street to stop, look at Trent and say “Fuck you!” It’s hard to imagine who wrote that and then sat back to say excellent, good dialogue. Trent finds Cane (sort-of) as the madness and chaos increase, and it’s either that Cane has written a new manuscript that drives people mad, or Cane now writes the entire world through the sheer force of fandom and popular belief, or demons have possessed Cane and are using him as a doorway, or… something. Maybe the demons just wanted access to this dimension for all the axes lying around. Trent tries to drive out of town but suddenly finds himself driving back into town, and we’re treated to this about four times. There are a few lines of pseudo-intellectual dialogue, such as the suggestion that if many more people were mad, sane people would be in the minority. Well, yes — sure. Finally, in the last few moments the film seems to throw out everything done up to that point, in favour of something that maybe kind of supports one theory, but could also be a whole new one.

In a way, it’s a film loaded with ideas, but given the jerky nature of the narrative, it feels like the film simply can’t decide which one it wants to pursue. In subtler moments there’s a lot of potential, but it’s thrown away in favour of someone trying to get through a doorway with an axe, or something meant to be similarly alarming. And a flashback to something more than Trent making another man squirm might have helped me care about the character. I really don’t think I’m declining to be caught up in the fun, as some critics have done with Carpenter (and by fun I mean suspense, the development of an idea), it’s more that there simply isn’t that much fun in this particular runaround.

The Thing (1982) and Pontypool (2009)

John Carpenter’s The Thing was inspired by both a film and a novella: as a youth he saw The Thing from Another World (1951), a film inspired by Who Goes There, a science fiction novella by John W. Campbell. In telling the story of an isolated outpost in Antarctica that discovers a buried alien organism, the 1951 film opted for a guy in a suit as the monster, and it’s perhaps fair to say they had no other options available at that time. Carpenter apparently loved the film, but wanted to return to the original idea about a shape-changing organism that, given time, could imitate any living creature through a hideous process of absorption — and even the smallest particle of it could strike out. If the organism were to succeed in getting away from the outpost to infect a city, the rest of the world would follow from there. Needless to say, this heightens the tension considerably, compared to a tall guy in a suit lumbering around smashing things.  

Beginning with a heartbeat-imitation score by Ennio Morricone, the 1982 film is an excellent production: tightly written, with good performances from both the supporting cast, and lead actor Kurt Russell. Years before CGI effects, the wildly imaginative stuff invented for the film scared the living daylights out of me as a child, and remains etched in my brain. Time has dated the film a little, in terms of how shocking it is, and it’s fair to say the film puts little or no time aside for characterisation, but a solid supporting cast helps immensely here, and insures a certain level of believability. Quite simply, audiences had never seen anything like it in 1982, and it remains a solid and chilling suspense film. The imaginative and shocking effects may have threatened to become the centrepiece of the film decades ago, but today viewers are more likely to notice other details, like the careful shots set up by Carpenter that imply someone else might be watching the character on display.

The Canadian film Pontypool may have arrived decades later, and after dozens of films have made it increasingly difficult to shock audiences, but it neatly sidesteps the entire issue — what’s wildly original here isn’t the effects, but the ideas behind this psychologically gripping film. And again, solid performances give the whole thing a credibility it would not otherwise have. Tony Burgess adapted his original and hugely enjoyable novel Pontypool Changes Everything into a screenplay for director Bruce McDonald, who handles it in a skillful, understated way. At a radio station in Pontypool, Ontario, DJ Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), his producer Sydney (Lisa Houle) and assistant Laurel (Georgina Reilly) begin getting conflicted, increasingly strange and horrific reports about local disturbances.

There’s enough left to the imagination here that it could be theatre, or radio drama, but as a film it also works remarkably well. I don’t want to give away the original and utterly creepy directions the film eventually goes, but I’ll say that it’s another epidemic film, and though it’s something of a zombie film, it doesn’t even really need the z-word. Highly recommended, but avoid online reviews that gleefully give away far too much. I only hope more Canadian films will be produced that make budget nearly irrelevant, in favour of  highly original scripts.

Watch a teaser clip here.

At the Earth’s Core (1976) and The Creeping Flesh (1972)

“You cannot mesmerize me, I’m British!”  It’s a little hard not to enjoy Peter Cushing in this low-budget but fun adaptation of At the Earth’s Core. And while the story by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875 – 1950) is yet another thinly veiled older story about white people parachuted into a situation to set it straight, or naturally dominate somehow (much like Tarzan of the Apes), some of the humor manages to offset this antiquated idea. In a film designed for children, Cushing plays a Victorian scientist who tests out his Iron Mole drilling machine along with his American financier friend, played by Doug McClure. On arrival, they discover a human population that’s too fragmented to form a proper rebellion against enslavement by the Mahars, telepathic vulture-creatures, though on first arrival they’re chased by a tremendous monster which is really just a guy in a chicken suit.  Cushing plays the passionate professor well here, and more or less revives what he did for Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks Invasion of Earth, 2150 A.D. (1966), two films that were produced the previous decade as a result of the immense popularity of Doctor Who, and the brief Dalek craze. But it hardly matters, the important thing is that Cushing is as adept at humour as he is playing less erratic, more dignified characters. His Dr. Who is often overlooked in histories of the program because his stories are bonus remakes of a couple of the TV stories, and they have their own continuity. But it hardly matters when they’re colourful fun as well. Drop any child in front of the second of those two films in particular, and they’ll be… well, mesmerized.  

Looking at his career as an actor, Cushing is a rare actor — a little like that person in high school that was popular and talented, but didn’t care much what crowd he hung around with. He was talented enough for anything, but in decades of horror and fantasy films (beginning with films like Horror of Dracula, 1959) never turned in a performance that made it appear he was bored or doing anything less than trying to create a believable character. The same can be said for Christopher Lee, reunited with Cushing for The Creeping Flesh. In fact, the two actors made over twenty films together. Here they play brothers competing for prestige and financial success — Lee runs an asylum, and Cushing is a scientist who brings a remarkable skeleton back from an expedition. Not only is the skeleton unique in appearance, it appears to be  able to grow flesh and regenerate when something as simple as water is poured on it. The Cushing character is likeable, but not perfect, and it is revealed that when he reluctantly sent his wife to the asylum, he hid it from his daughter, telling her instead that her mother was dead. The character repeatedly states that he only wanted to protect his daughter, but remains resolutely stubborn about it, and after a few more misguided decisions the retribution the creature brings makes a certain amount of sense, though only in the unforgiving context of horror films. The Lee character is worse, but predictably enough by the end the creature is revived and walking the earth, and though it’s open-ended as to exactly what this will mean for humanity, maybe that’s all the creature does wherever it goes — tip the balance in favour of a morally unsatisfying result.  

These aren’t even career highlights for Cushing. In the 1970s, he’d go on to play a supporting role as a villain in Star Wars (1977) and introduce himself to a whole new audience, and a new generation.

[REC] (2007)

[REC] is short for record in this fairly brief, seventy-five minute Spanish horror film, a film that manages to be remarkably entertaining (even if it’s also fairly bloody) borrowing the device of a hand-held camera’s point of view.  A two-person crew from a reality show called “While You’re Asleep” follows a few firefighters late at night into a building where an old woman on the top floor seems strangely afflicted, all her neighbours huddling at the bottom of the long, ornate stairwell, complaining of wild screams.  Within minutes, the situation starts to escalate out of control and the building is quarantined, ominous figures outside every door and window hanging plastic and making threats through a bullhorn.

To call this the stuff of nightmares is something of an understatement — I watched it during the day and I’m glad I did, because I can only imagine how the relentless build-up of suspense would feel otherwise. Cleverly, the film begins with absolutely nothing happening — the host of the show sneaks around a quiet firehouse looking for something interesting and wishing there’d be an alarm. The pace feels a little like sitting at the top of a hill in a go-kart and starting off at a crawl, but finally regretting giving yourself the shove that has you careening wildly out of control by the end.

The word zombie isn’t actually used, in favour of talk of a virus spread through saliva. And, it has to be said the film becomes a trifle predictable, with a couple of those moments when someone creeps slowly into a room to have the inevitable zombie jump on his or her back as soon as they get far enough. But ultimately, the film has a relentless grip on the viewer.

I’m not sure I see the appeal of the zombie genre. I know the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) had a few characters who were alive, but seemed quite dead, emotionally.  At the same time there seemed to be a clear divide between older and younger people, with older zombies consuming and converting the younger people. Night of the Living Dead also has a brilliant final moment that almost certainly sets it above every zombie flick made since then. Maybe it’s fair to say zombie flicks are about a lack of compassion in the world, or maybe it’s just fair to say walking dead people gives us the creeps as something fundamentally wrong, aside from playing on our fears of a modern epidemic. Possibly, we don’t like the idea of the dead coming back and being supremely pissed off because it addresses a necessary disloyalty to previous generations — we all need to go our own way, after all. What I can tell you for sure is that this film will scare the living daylights out of you, and that it was remade as an apparently inferior film called Quarantine, in the United States. Subtitles? Bah, we’ll just remake the film!

Dracula A.D. 1972

Some notes for Hammer Horror, over thirty years too late:

Don’t have the great grand-daughter of Van Helsing faint on the jukebox, this is supposed to be a more progressive century. Don’t have all the men turn out to be power hungry wankers eager to become vampires, this is supposed to be a more progressive century. Be advised Dracula doesn’t look dignified biting into hippies. Don’t have Peter Cushing, as the twentieth-century descendant of Van Helsing, sit around in an office for the first hour. When he does do something, don’t have him run around in the streets helplessly, and leave out the scene where he stops and looks at a mannequin. Be advised a satanic ritual rarely begins with “Dig the music, kids!” Don’t have a woman as attractive as Caroline Munro be the first one to disappear. Have a powerful orchestral score or have the funky seventies music, but pick one and stick to it. Don’t have the overacting vampire disciple of Dracula run into the bathroom in agony, throw himself into the shower and turn it on to die there for no particular reason. And I think you can just call your film Dracula 1972, the rest makes the title clunky — and try not to inspire Dracula 2000, but it’s already too late.

I did like the beginning battle between Van Helsing and Dracula, followed by the sudden transition to the twentieth-century with the shot of the plane in the sky. Good choice to have Peter Cushing return as Van Helsing (or, his descendent this time around) along with Christopher Lee once again as Dracula, both lending the film some class. And to their credit, neither of them phone in a performance, though Cushing will be far better and much more touching the same year in one part of an five story anthology film, Tales from the Crypt — he plays a kindly old man targeted by a nasty neighbour. Playing Dracula for the sixth time, Lee will later comment that it got to the point where he was emotionally pressured into it, with the suggestion that people need the work. Please note, Horror of Dracula (1959) was a fun, colourful and classy update of the legend. A classic, really. But this is your seventh vampire film, and your sixth one with Dracula. You might have stopped somewhere along the way. It’s a film that’s easy enough to forgive, but also easy enough to forget.

Oh, and thanks for keeping Michael Kitchen employed as one of the young punks, he’ll be subtle and brilliant decades later in the TV series Foyle’s War, as a quietly competent police officer during wartime.

Night of the Lepus (1972)

I’m telling you, if you need to class up a B-movie about killer rabbits the size of wolves, use the latin word for rabbit. It also doesn’t hurt to have fairly recognizable actors like Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh (best known for Psycho in 1960) and DeForest Kelley, best known as Dr. McCoy in the original run of Star Trek, from 1966 to 1969. Someone should do an article on Trek actors dabbling in seventies horror after the cancellation of the original show and before Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and the revival of Trek made all that unnecessary. Aside from DeForest Kelley in this film, Shatner made Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) and Leonard Nimoy had a prominent role in an impressive update of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).

I watched this mainly for Kelley, and he seems to have tackled this in a relaxed but professional manner, sporting a moustache and chatting about what to do (and, there’s a lot of dull chatter here), or wearing a funky brown leather jacket and blasting away at a rabbit (sorry, a lepus) with a shotgun. The special effects are limited to actors reacting to close-ups of rabbits, quick shots of guys in bunny suits pretending to maul someone, or actual rabbits bumping their way through a model farm.  To be fair, there are also a few effects shots where people are briefly in the same scene as a giant rabbit, but however seriously the film runs with this, there’s simply no way to make rabbits frightening. It goes without saying it’s a film to see with a few friends and a few drinks, unless like me you’re a fan of Kelley.

A few scenes are devoted to the genetic tampering that helped create the problem. I sometimes wonder about the collective impact of so many science-fiction / horror films like this — as often as they suggest we’re a little too free and loose with science and in danger of making horrible mistakes, they also always seem to suggest we’ll improvise some sort of solution. My favourite scene actually comes near the end, when it’s finally time to create a corridor and try and herd the rabbits over the electrified train tracks. An officer pulls up to the front of a drive-in film, gets on the bullhorn and announces the following:

“Attention, attention — ladies and gentlemen, attention!  There’s a herd of killer rabbits headed this way and we desperately need your help.  Roll up your windows, turn on your lights and follow the police car at the entrance to the theatre. Please keep calm and cooperate with the authorities. Do you read me?”

And everyone immediately honks their horn and starts up their car. Because you know, this is the sort of thing that happens, right?

Let the Right One In (2008)

Several months ago I began hearing about an inventive Swedish vampire film with the intriguing title Let the Right One In.  It sounds like a poetry book, or a novel — certainly a far cry from the titles of most horror films. The plot concerns Oskar, a sensitive 12 year old in a perpetual state of distress, constantly picked on at school by a small gang of three kids.  In a scene where one of the kids is told to whip Oskar by their leader, the kid does it, but bursts into tears partway through the task — and I have to say, it’s a thoughtful film that makes it clear without spelling it out that bullies thrive on spineless followers as much as their own anger. I won’t say too much about the film and ruin it for others, but Oskar meets Eli, a 12 year old girl who appears to be rather special, and the two form a bond, as they’re both already old enough to instinctively know something about loneliness.  It’s beautifully shot, with excellent performances, a minimal score (at least, I don’t remember a score) and a unique take on vampires. Much is made of the old idea that you need to invite a vampire into your home before he or she can enter, and it becomes symbolic of carefully choosing the people that are close to you.

The film reminded me of Habit (1997) a somewhat clunky but ultimately mesmerizing low-budget New York film where vampirism is a metaphor for clinging people and needy relationships. It’s directed by Larry Fessenden who also plays the lead character, falling hard for a vampire named Anna (Meredith Snaider, in her first and only film) and finding the relationship like quicksand — he simply can’t seem to untangle himself. Both films take the well-worn idea of a vampire and use it as a springboard to get to other ideas. Habit is the colder and harsher film, outlining various ideas (sometimes in speeches by the characters that seem a little too direct) but thankfully never really spelling out the needy relationship metaphor. Let the Right One In, on the other hand, takes the vampire premise and grows a sincere and touching story around it, making its point through more subtle emotional content, so that it’s ultimately the more successful of the two.  At the same time, I sincerely appreciate any fresh take on such an old idea, and Habit is not to be missed.

Horror Express (1972)

So there’s this Neanderthal man found frozen somewhere in Asia, now being loaded onto a train by an arrogant professor (Christopher Lee) and as it turns out, it has a sort of glowing eye, is very much alive, and can grab people by the head and suck all the knowledge out of their brains, leaving them a corpse with plain white, colourless eyes.  As the weird-ass Neanderthal (actually an alien, it becomes more and more obvious) grows in strength, the whole thing plays out in the cramped, confined space of the train like some kind of horror version of an Agatha Christie plot.  The Christopher Lee character is given able assistance from an ultra-polite professor of some kind played by Peter Cushing.  The monster starts switching bodies, everyone is supect, there’s a cop, a countess, some kind of mad monk who believes the alien is Satan himself, and Telly Savalas shows up as a Russian officer with a New York accent.  There’s even an autopsy at one point that makes the X-Files look tame. Neanderthal dude claims he’ll cure illnesses and advance science by a few hundred years if he’s just allowed to hang around and, well, crush whoever he wants into oblivion.

Why don’t they make bizarre, fun horror films like this anymore, instead of the joyless slaughter porn of recent years?  Oh, and Peter Cushing (fast becoming one of my personal heroes) gets the best line in the film, when it’s suggested he or Christopher Lee could be possessed by the monster: “Monsters?  We’re British!”

The Abominable Snowman (1957)

I’ve blogged about the great Peter Cushing recently in The Beast Must Die (1974) close the end of his film career, but recently went back to check out The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas (1957) an early horror film for Cushing, and yet an underrated classic and a film that actually plays more like a thoughtful mystery.

Sure, there’s a body falling from a height that’s so obviously a dummy it isn’t funny. And sure, we’re talking about some actors climbing around sets and fake snow, but the studio work blends very well with some impressive location work, particularly as it’s all in black and white. Cushing co-stars with Forrest Tucker, and the two actors have roles that contrast quite nicely. Cushing is the utterly thoughtful naturalist and preservationist, and Tucker the showman who just wants to shoot a few and bring them home.  In other words, the two represent the best and worst sides of our nature. Wisely, the film waits, and then waits even longer to show us the face of a Snowman, while Cushing gets lines like this, looking at the body of one of them: “This isn’t the face of a savage thing… there’s gentleness.  Suppose they’re not just a pitiable remnant waiting to die out.  Waiting, yes… but waiting for us to go.”

Wait a sec, a fifties horror flick that suggests some of the low-key biodiversity out there might outlive us, and it’s only our egocentricity that allows us to think we’re more important?  I was impressed.  Sadly, the film is out of print on DVD, and as I’ve moaned before, there’s no Peter Cushing collection to speak of.  But try to track this one down, if you can, because it’s well worth it. I was able to see it through Zip.ca, in Canada.

Watch the flying dummy here.

The Beast Must Die (1974)

“This film is a detective story — in which you are the detective.

The question is not “Who is the murderer?” — but “Who is the werewolf?”

After all the clues have been shown — you will get a chance to give your answer.

Watch for the werewolf break.”

With a hilariously funky seventies soundtrack, The Beast Must Die manages to be pretty good fun, even if low budget and extremely cheesy fun.  And yes, this is a film that stops near the end to give you thirty seconds to think about who might be the werewolf.  The premise is pretty simple: a wealthy, egocentric man invites about six people to his country estate (wired for surveillance) to dine and hang around, knowing that when the werewolf transforms, he can hunt it.  So, um, yeah that’s the plot.

I watched this mainly for Peter Cushing, who was reintroduced to audiences in the original Star Wars (1977) but had a long career before that as one of a handful of English actors (along with Christopher Lee) who elevated Hammer horror productions such as Horror of Dracula (1958)  Curse of Frankenstein (1957) or The Mummy (1959), all remakes of the classic films of the thirties but with a level of gore that jolted audiences in the late fifties. Aside from playing characters like Van Helsing and Dr. Frankenstein (with Lee as Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy) he was even Sherlock Holmes in a pretty decent Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), and Doctor Who in a couple of colourful spin-off films while the TV series was terribly popular.  In the sixties, Lee and Cushing starred in a pile of Dracula and Frankenstein sequels, with various levels of quality, but it’s the originals from the late fifties that stand out in my mind as the kind of classy yet shocking horror film that just isn’t made any more.

Cushing doesn’t have a lot of screen time in this, but does manage to be as classy as possible while putting a bullet in his mouth — a supposedly silver one — to prove he isn’t a werewolf.  Still, even if Cushing fans are disappointed by this one, it’s a fun, bizarre little film crying out to be remade with a better budget, and probably without the “werewolf break.”

There’s an impressive Peter Cushing tribute here, with great quotes from Cushing and Lee.

Cloverfield (2008)

Cloverfield has the good sense to be short, given that it’s about fifteen minutes of character set-up, followed by a monster attacking New York. What sets this apart from some other genre films is the shaky-cam, shot by a character approach (making the film into something like “Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla”). There are certainly some impressive effects to be found here, as well as a fast pace and some comic relief that isn’t contrived enough to take you out of the film or seem out of place.  They’re also smart to refuse to allow the viewer to do more than glimpse the monster for the first half of the film, and in the most innovative move, flashbacks to a previous day at Coney Island are the result of bits of tape that didn’t happen to be taped over on the day of the attack.  This was my favourite element of the film, and I longed for them to be more weirdly significant or prophetic, though it’s perhaps best they weren’t too heavy-handed.

It’s also just barely believable that the characters would keep the camera going during some of the more intense sequences, and that the army might not confiscate it. The thing that hurts believability the most was actually that most of the cast are stunning, though the same time, it’s probably a small miracle they’re unknowns at all. And yes, it does seem a little odd to talk about believability when it’s about a monster attacking New York, but New York has been attacked, and the central premise here is that a small crew of friends managed to film it all. Nitpicking aside, Cloverfield is an entertaining ride. Maybe the inevitable sequel can do something with the unsubtle allusions to 9/11 introduced here.

28 Days Later (2003) and 28 Weeks Later (2007)

Playing on our fears about infectious diseases, 28 Days Later is utterly gripping, compelling as both a horror film but also a film that has a few statements to make.  A virus referred to as “rage” turns people into rabid, adrenalin-filled hostile zombies, and spreads so quickly that by the time our central character Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes in hospital there are only pockets of survivors fighting for survival.  And it has to be said, whoever invented the sprinting zombie has seriously heightened intensity in this particular genre.  Jim meets other survivors, and finally they discover a small base camp of around ten soldiers, which is ultimately a weird little microcosm of society: a slightly mad leader, one compassionate and thoughtful personality, some followers, and one dude that make the infected population outside the camp look pretty good by comparison.  There’s even a slavery theme thrown in the works, with one infected soldier kept on a leash, to see if they ever starve to death. Even the very definition of infected is called into question — couldn’t someone utterly lacking in compassion arguably be said to be infected with something?  The first film also has a touch of mystery, given that the viewer learns along with Jim exactly why the busiest streets of London are deserted, and has lighter moments that break up an almost unbearable tension — here’s our crew of survivors joyfully rampaging through an abandoned grocery store with the first real food they’ve found in weeks, or here’s a character that can still crack a joke.  Finally, despite a lot of understandable bleakness for a nearly-the-end-of-the-world film, the end allows some hope, and the idea that however brutal the epidemic, there will be survivors (there are alternate endings on the DVD, but I think the one ultimately stuck on the film is the best one).      

Unfortunately, I’m not sure I think 28 Weeks Later has any of these things, really.  Watching a few of the extras, the filmmakers describe it as “a lot more action, a lot more gore,” and “a survival film.” Um, sure. The thing is, the first one was a survival film, and managed so much more it almost defies classification. This time around it’s a decent budget and a slickly made film once again, but I didn’t catch much in the way of themes or ideas. And forget lighter moments to break up the tension, 28 Weeks Later seems to delight in introducing heroic characters and then giving them all the most horrific deaths. Finally, the end can only be described as a blatant set-up for a possible third film.  So, let’s call this the franchise that didn’t need to be a franchise.  But rent the first film, it’s an edge of your seat ride, and the smartest horror film I’ve ever seen.

El Orfanato (The Orphanage) (2007)

When you watch a Spanish horror film that turns out to have heart and intelligence you can see how there would have been pressure to produce it differently in North America.  For example, there’s a ghost of a kid who keeps appearing with a bag over his head at the end of hallways, staring at people and making weird-ass noises, and you can’t help but think that in a North American remake, there’d be some desperate race to find a way to destroy the ghost, instead of a film that — without giving away too much, hopefully — has a central character who tries to understand the kid. Sometimes you can destroy the hatred, not the hateful object. This isn’t any kind of revelation, and yet many horror films ignore the idea.  

Central character Laura grew up in an orphanage and later buys that same orphanage with her husband and young adopted son, who soon finds he has a lot of imaginary friends playing more and more complicated games, and drawing him away. Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, with apparent help producing it from Guillermo Del Toro, it’s interesting to watch the directors talk about how they’re interested in using fantasy to get at truth, not reality.  Some of those weird-ass noises go completely without explanation, and it’s fair to say the film develops into something more complex than most horror films.  There are one or two truly horrific scenes, but I think they serve to illustrate that it can be a frightening world, and underline that desire to shelter someone from it.  Some will find the film a little sentimental, but I think the performances and music are actually restrained, and keep the film from going over the top. I have to be careful about what I watch in horror these days, because the current trend to produce what some critics calls splatter-porn holds no appeal for me.  Fortunately, this was not a misstep, and it’s even recommended.

The Signal (2007)

Oh, you’re a crafty little indie horror film.  Yes, you are.  You look like you’re about something, and maybe in a fuzzy way, you are.  There’s that small, good moment at the beginning when the man looks at the woman in the darkness of the bedroom and says, simply “Stay,” and he has that look that seems to say a lot more.  But then ten minutes later you’re showing us some minor character in a hallway getting their throat cut with garden shears.  So, you’re all about this, and then you’re all about that.  Are you a Gemini? Your premise seems original: a crazy signal broadcasts on all TV sets, and right after that semi-tender one night stand and bedroom scene, the crazy signal produces a lot of crazy people.  Chaos.  Primal rage, or whatever.   I wouldn’t know.  But what’s the point, little film, what’s the point?  It’s a neat idea to say let’s bump up the mind-numbing, mind-twisting power of television by ten thousand percent, so that instead of the slow brain-numb many of us flirt with, all the characters are completely freaked out and frazzled. Clever, yes. But there’s a certain unfortunate irony to introducing that idea and then doing little with it, aside from guys getting clocked on the side of the head with baseball bats, and people pummeling each other to a bloody pulp with fire extinguishers.  Oh, was there something clever there, like putting out the brain with a fire extinguisher?  Sigh.  Little film, you’re frustrating. You had a funny scene with a kind of dorky guy coming to a party with no idea all this was going on, which was funny but a trifle sad, because he was pleasantly oblivious through pure luck, and then not long after that you show us a guy with one of those huge cans of professional bug exterminator stuff, and he sprays it into a woman’s mouth.  Little film, I didn’t want to see that.  I’m trying to forget it.   Oh, and fuck you, little film!  Sigh.  I’m writing you a letter, little film, I’m sending you an email.  I’d like to know what you were thinking.  None of your characters get anywhere close to figuring out where this signal is coming from, or why.  It’s all about two or three men in particular that duke it out, and even that turns out to be a vague, distorted, funhouse mirror version of male competition.  

Let’s create a new section at the video store: the zombie intellectual film.  No wait, let’s call it the section for little films that haven’t grown up and don’t know what they are.   No wait, let’s call it new directors trying to show they can do bold work.  I don’t think it helps that three directors each took a part of this film, because it sort of holds together, but then it sort of doesn’t.  I thought the first director was off to a decent start, with that moment where the man says “Stay.”  Maybe it would have been impressive if he’d been allowed to carry on.  What do you think, little film?  Little film?  You don’t really have an answer, do you.

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

Starring William Shatner and his sideburns, Kingdom of the Spiders is one of those good bad films, like the good bad books Orwell used to talk about sometimes — nothing outstanding but certainly entertaining, or in other words bad in a good way.  In a small town in Arizona, ultra-poisonous tarantulas are coming out in overwhelming numbers to attack humans because we messed them up with too many pesticides, or something.  The lessons aren’t subtle, and like some other horror films, the characters have the first half of the film to join some kind of family unit or find a romance, rather than get bumped off as expendable.  Let’s not get into why that’s vaguely disturbing in favour of accepting it as one of the standards of horror.    

Shatner plays “Rack,” (don’t ask, his nickname came out of a pool game somehow) a local vet who flirts outrageously, grinning like a big kid, and then spends the second half of the film swatting spiders off people and saying things like “Sweet Jesus.”  We also get to hear stuff like “This is our home, and no damn spiders are gonna run us out,” and phones aren’t dead, they’re “graveyard dead.”  These are spiders that know to go for the fuse box, and watch carefully for the spider-cam, because the film simply wouldn’t have been complete without the spider perspective once in a while.  

I grew up watching Shatner in reruns of original Trek, and the man has a way of being immensely watchable — he doesn’t even hang up a phone like another actor would, making him the ultimate good bad actor.  So if the county fair is going to be ruined in a film with a few impressive stunts and a lot of unintentionally hilarious lines, he’s the man to star in it. 

Frankenstein (2004)

Hallmark makes television films? Apparently so, and strangely enough, they’ve produced a quite faithful and worthwhile adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel here. It must be one of the most frequently adapted novels of all time, and yet it seems all the right elements are usually not quite there. 

At nearly three hours, this film takes its time, and the viewer is conscious of scenes that simply didn?t need to be included, but it does have good performances, a good score and great scenery (shot in Slovakia and Norway). The cast includes Donald Sutherland, Julie Delpy and William Hurt in supporting roles, while Alec Newman (probably best known as the lead in the TV mini-series of Dune) plays Viktor Frankenstein, and Luke Goss is the Frankenstein monster. 

As the monster, Goss is the weak link here – his monster is articulate and fairly sympathetic, but he’s not large, or commanding, and his makeup doesn’t make him look horrific, more like a pale dude who could use a glass of orange juice. The scenes where others find him immediately revolting don’t ring true. And with everything available through modern effects and choreography, it’s a little disappointing to see yet another Frankenstein that simply clutches at people and smacks them. As something unnatural, why couldn’t the Frankenstein monster move with horrific speed? It could truly be the stuff of nightmares, but we seem to be stuck with the lumbering standard set by the 1931 film. Still, Goss is superior to Robert De Niro moaning and chewing scenery in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. 

So once again, it’s mixed results for fans of the Shelley novel. The extra time meant room for lines like “If I cannot inspire love, I will inspire fear,” which is excellent. But it’s unfortunate it’s a softened version of the monster, and one that doesn’t inspire much fear.

Gojira (1954) and Godzilla (1956)

Produced around ten years after the atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and introducing a monster dislodged and empowered by nuclear testing, it isn’t hard to guess at the subtext in the original Japanese film Gojira (1954). What’s surprising is that the original isn’t just about a guy in a suit stepping on models of tanks, it attempts a message, and emotional impact. As the monster destroys the city, a woman huddles in flames and rubble, trying to shelter her three children, saying “Not long now, soon we’ll be reunited with father… not long now.” Surprised? I was too. 

North Americans have mostly known Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956) which is the same film recut with less emphasis on a tragic scientist, inserting scenes with Raymond Burr as a reporter who always seems to be in the right place, chomping on a pipe, shot so that it appears he was at the back of the room saying things like “My Japanese is a little rusty!” so that someone translates. On occasion, he also talks to the back of a head, meant to be one of the Japanese actors. In short, the English version reduces the film to something closer to a simple monster movie. 

Both films are included here, along with commentary by experts (not people involved in the making of them), trailers and a few interesting featurettes on things like the making of the costume.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

Thankfully, The Exorcism of Emily Rose isn’t a third rate remake of the Exorcist, but instead tries something different, combining the genres of courtroom drama and horror film. Depending on your perspective, Emily Rose suffered from some combination of epilepsy and psychosis and needed medical help, or fought demonic possession with the help of her priest (it’s also possible, of course, she fervently believed she was demonically possessed). Based on a true story, her priest is on trial in the film for possible criminal negligence, and in particular for suggesting she stop taking her medication.The film has good production values but is also well cast with solid performances, particularly from Jennifer Carpenter as Emily Rose, who was capable of such convincing physical twitches and struggles that it helped convince the filmmakers to scale back the special effects and instead use them to enhance her performance (though effects are still used here). One of the most disturbing scenes in the film is a simple one where Rose is found lying on the floor. I won’t ruin it here, but be warned, it’s creepy stuff.

If the effects are restrained, the attempt to be objective here is less successful. It reminds me of Inherit the Wind, a film where both faith and science are brought to a courtroom, and though both sides are presented, the viewer is ultimately encouraged in a direction, because all it takes is for certain characters to be more likeable or articulate. The use of flashbacks and a courtroom framework drains some of the suspense, but there are still disturbing moments and interesting ideas to be found here, and even the attempt to be objective is admirable. Strangely, while the disc has a featurette each on story, casting, and design, any mention of the “true” story that inspired it (a little digging tells me this is apparently documented in the book The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel) has been excluded, which is unfortunate.

The Mummy (1940)

Reviewed from “The Legacy Collection,” DVD release. 

After Frankenstein made him a star, the studio looked for another vehicle for Boris Karloff, and The Mummy was it. The first Mummy film (1932) has the magnetic Karloff, who doesn’t actually spend much time in the severe Mummy bandage makeup, but somehow sort of regenerates into almost human form, probably for the sake of his own comfort after what he went through on Frankenstein. He’s still a magnificent villain and an excellent actor, opposite a striking female lead in a film with good production values that puts the cartoonish remake decades later to shame.

The sequel films (four more flims in the series) don’t have Karloff, and I found them average at best, with irritating comic relief sidekicks, perky dogs that lead the hero to the Mummy, no real explanation for how the Mummy survives destruction each time, and recycled plots. I suppose they’re interesting to watch once, to see how the series degraded.

Worth buying, however, for the original film and extras, a decent documentary (though much of the information is related second hand, by film historians), and the trailers and commentary.