Save the Night of The Living Dead Chapel

The chapel in Evan's City Cemetary that features in the famous opening scene of Night Of The Living Dead (1968) is under threat of demolition, sparking a campaign headed by Gary Streiner (one of Romero's associates in the film) to raise funds to fix it up. 


NOLTD fans with a few pennies to spare at Christmas can check out the campaign here Fix the Chapel.


The campaign has gone global, helped partly by a email from George Romero pledging his support.  Here's the message from George:

In 1967, the citizens of Evans City, Pennsylvania permitted us to use their community cemetery for a very unusual purpose... to make a movie.       At the time, nobody in the Pittsburgh area was making movies, certainly not feature-length movies, but that's what we had set out to do.  We hoped to someday complete a film which might actually be worthy of distribution.  We were young and reaching for the stars.  We had no reason to believe that anyone would support us in our aspirations.  But the people of Evans City did.  They welcomed us, in some cases fed us, and occasionally even agreed to play small roles in the film.  They gave us all their support and then some.  In this way, they became the first people to not only approve but endorse what we were attempting to do.
The people of Evans City in effect 'teamed-up' with us, subscribed to our hopes and dreams as if they were their own.  It was as if, in accepting us, they were willing to accept the far-fetched idea that a film made by what could only be called 'amateurs' might just possibly have a chance at success.  The film,Night of the Living Dead, was as its title suggests, a horror film, which further prejudiced its chance at any sort of lasting attention.  But the people of Evans City knew nothing about box-office shares or audience-response polls.  We believed, so they believed.  And, in a hundred ways, they enabled us to complete the film.       In the end, our litte movie was distributed worldwide, was invited into the permanent collection at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and was selected by the American Film Institute as one of the top 100 films of all time.  We have all gotten careers out of its success.  The film has somehow remained a favorite of audiences ever since its release in 1968, and a cult has formed around it.  Hard as it is to believe, people travel from all over the world just to visit the place where the film was photographed. Only the people of Evans City have the ability to say, "Oh, yes, Night of the Living Dead was filmed right here in town."  I'm sure this hasn't created an economic 'boom' for the town, but to some minor extent, it has given Evans City a permanent place in some people's hearts.  Not the more important, though mournful place occupied by men and women who perished in service to community and country, but a happier place born out of success, a sense of accomplishment against very long odds.       Our first day of filming in Evans City was spent in tne cemetery.  There seems to be a 'Zombie' craze sweeping the nation right now, and indeed the world.  I was in Strasbourg, France last week where more than 3000 people turned out in make-up and costume for a 'Zombie Walk' through town.  Next week, I'm going to Mexico City, where upwards of 5000 are expected to attend.  Well, the very first Zombie (not your grandfather's vintage Caribbean-style Zombie, but one of the 'New Order') made his premiere appearance on a cloudy afternoon in 1967 in the graveyard at Evans City.  I'll never forget the day.  I was fulfilling a lifelong dream: directing a motion picture.  My long-time friends and partners were there with me (Russ, Jack, Gary, Vince, Bill...) and the people of Evans City played a big part in making it all possible.       I'm writing this as a way of thanking Evans City and voicing my strong vote for the preservation of the chapel at the cemetery there.

We Are What We Are (2010)

They say Christmas is a time for families, so in the next few posts I will be looking at some recent horror films with particularly degenerate families, starting with this 2010 Mexican cannibal shocker from director Jorge Michel Grau (whom I understand is no relation to the director of the classic zombie flick The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, 1974).

Mexican cinema has come into its own in the last decade or so with films like Amores Perros (2000) that depict the brutal reality of life in modern Mexico City, a place where life is cheap and survival often calls for desperate measures. At first glance, We Are What We Are seems to follow in this school of ‘poverty cinema’ and it shares the same languid pace and formal asceticism as other celebrated Mexican offerings as Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001), but as we get further into the film it becomes apparent that We Are What We Are is closer in theme to schlockers like Frightmare (1974) and Death Line (aka Raw Meat) (1974) in its use of the cannibalism motif to explore degenerate families.

Tony Williams in his book, Hearths of Darkness, wrote of the family as an instrument of repression, a way of turning out docile members of society willing to conform to social norms. We Are What We Are manages to explore this idea pretty neatly within its brief (80 mins) running time. We are firmly in Freudian territory here; what is described as the ‘Oedipal Trajectory’ forms the thesis of the film: the process by which male family members are socialised to take on patriarchal roles within the family, and by extension, wider society, thus ensuring the continuance of male power structures.

In We Are What We Are, when the father of a poor Mexican family dies unexpectedly, it falls to his sensitive son, Alfredo, as the eldest, to take on the role of patriarch. This family, however, survive by eating human meat and Alfredo seems ill-equipped temperamentally to take on the responsibility of hunting down victims.  While his mother, Patricia, sits in judgement waiting for Alfredo to prove his metal; his younger, more vicious brother, Julian eyes the father role for himself, while his sister Sabine manipulates them both behind-the-scenes like Lady MacBeth, finally goading them into action.

Logically in the film cannibalism as the family ‘ritual’ is presented as the social norm – not a deviation from the social norm: and although poverty may be a contributory factor, cannibalism is seen as a monstrous extension of patriarchal family values and a way of holding the family unit together in the face of social change. An image in Bunuel’s Los Olvidados comes to mind: in a nightmare, the child sees his mother coming towards him holding a dripping hunk of dead flesh. This image – with its evocation of the child’s fear of the mother – resonates throughout We Are What We Are.

In We Are What We Are the women in the family work towards perpetuating the patriarchal power structure. The Oedipal Trajectory, according to Freud, works by dissuading the male child from identifying with the mother through the fear of castration – both literal and symbolically through the denial of power within the family structure, a demotion, if you will, within the pecking order – so that the male child becomes like his father. The ‘successful’ completion of the trajectory results in the male child taking on the characteristics of heterosexual masculinity to become the virile, aggressive patriarch.  Unfortunately, Alfredo falls short somewhat, harbouring homosexual feelings and suffering ‘Oedipal guilt’ because he is unable to live up to his mother’s expectations. During one of his hunts he brings home a victim from a gay nightclub that he has ‘picked up’. We have seen him wrestling with his sexual desires and for a brief moment, think that he might liberate himself from the repression of his family life by breaking with 'social norms’, but his repression is too great for him to take that step.

Although the women in the film maintain their gender roles within the family structure– the men bring home the meat; the women prepare it – both mother and daughter act out their ‘power envy’ (or penis envy) in their treatment of Alfredo.  Although they devote their frustrated energies to the perpetuation of patriarchy within the family, they are excluded from the wider world of money, power and politics. Their resentment at this exclusion shows itself in their secret despising of Alfredo and his ‘privileged’ position within the family. Patricia forbids him to bring home a prostitute for them to eat because her husband enjoyed the privilege – as befits the patriarch - of consorting with prostitutes. Later, Patricia brings home a man for herself, on the pretext of providing a ‘meal’ for her family, whom she is then forced to kill. The film shows that in the patriarchal family ‘hate’ masquerades as ‘love’: the only priority, as Patricia points out, is that in time of crisis at least one family member survives, so that the ‘ritual’ can be preserved and continued. This plays itself out in the final scenes as the police close in on the cannibal house and a shoot-out ensues. As Patricia flees, leaving her children to their fate, the family finally implodes: Alfredo attacks Sabine and is shot by Julian, who is himself shot and killed by the police.

Interestingly, Grau posits the prostitutes – in their deviation from the social ‘norm’ – as another potentially positive alternative to the patriarchal family. This is of course another reason for Patricia’s antagonism towards them: they pose an ideological threat to ‘family values’.  Grau depicts them as a social collective, ‘a sisterhood’ with their own moral code (which is more honourable than Patricia’s). Similar to Tod Browning’s Freaks, the prostitutes hold the policy of ‘offend one and you offend them all’. As Patricia rests after fleeing the police shoot out, the whores converge on her, en-masse, and beat her to death.

Now with the cannibal family wiped out – and only Sabine left alive – is the ‘ritual’ over? I will not reveal the film’s conclusion but suffice it to say that in the patriarchal society of We Are What We Are indoctrination runs deep and old ways are hard to change.

We Are What We Are is pretty strong meat. It will provide you with food for thought on Christmas Day when, as head of the family, you prepare to carve the turkey.

Ambiguities in Suspiria

I'm not an expert on Argento like James at Behind The Couch who has published a book on the director LINK but I love Suspiria and when I watched it again recently I was struck by its ambiguities: that the events in the film might not be supernatural at all but (para)psychological. Of course,  Argento pretty much signals this in the scene where Udo Keir gives the famous ‘broken mirrors, broken minds’ speech but it’s intriguing to watch the film with these ambiguities in mind. 

To start with, Argento’s positioning of the main character is interesting: Suzy is neutral – she neither believes nor disbelieves in witchcraft. Instead, like so many Argento characters, she is unwittingly drawn into a mystery that she feels compelled to resolve through rational means. She is a contrast to the neurotic Sara and the hysterical Pat – whose histories of mental breakdown make them ripe for suggestion. She is un-sentimental and, as Tanner remarks, ‘strong-willed’ (Jessica Harper played similar no-nonsense women in ‘Phantom of the Paradise’ and the little-seen ‘Inserts’); she provides a strong backbone for the film in terms of exploring its rational/supernatural ambiguities.

Suzy enters a world of the uncanny...

Her arrival in to a world of the uncanny - symbolised by the opening storm as she leaves the airport at Friburg – can be read as her entering a ‘collective mental state’ of hysteria and superstition.  Argento shows this hysteria to be contagious – all the ballet dancers in the school seem to be affected by it – even the hard-headed Olga, who first offers Suzy lodgings ‘at a price’, seems to be on the edge of sanity (Freud would doubtless say that all this hysteria was down to the sexual frustrations of all these women cooped up together). Suzy, despite her rational mindedness, succumbs to it briefly when she becomes suggestible to psychic attack in the corridor (it is interesting that Argento keeps her incapacitated for some sections of the film) but it is because of her rational nature that Suzy recovers from this and it is really her friendship with Sara that draws her deeper into the mystery - into uncovering the ‘secret of the iris’ - than any firm belief in ‘witches’.

...and succumbs to mass hysteria

Indeed there is maybe very little in Suspiria that might not have a rational or (para)psychological explanation.  Understanding Argento’s idea of ‘broken minds’ even helps to explain some of the ‘arbitrary’ episodes in the film that seem to have no purpose within the plot: such as the maggot invasion and the bat attack. Once you believe in the supernatural, then all natural phenomenon might be the work of occult forces: bad weather (the storm at the beginning), strange animal behaviour (Daniel's dog attack), inexplicable accidents. These incidents in the film explore this mind-set.

....that gives strange natural events - like the bat attack - a 'supernatural' meaning

Argento is also careful to maintain ambiguity in the murder sequences: we see only the killer’s arms. They are strange, hairy and freakish – they may be the arms of a demon, but then again maybe not. The eyes that Pat sees through the window glinting in the darkness might be those of a cat, not related to the killer at all. Argento never presents us with something that is indisputably supernatural, unlike, say Polanski  in ‘The Ninth Gate’, who shows us Emmanuelle Seigner doing the physically impossible by floating down steps. In Suspiria, the killers might be demons or 'familiars' conjured up by the witches; or they might be human acolytes, 'brainwashed' into doing the witches' bidding. There is a moment when we briefly see the back of Sara's killer, dressed in a cape, walking away from us:  it might even be Richard, the young penniless dancer who has a crush on Suzy and who also works for Miss Tanner and Miss Blanc.

Sara's killer is glimpsed briefly from behind

Once it is accepted that witchcraft has a (para)psychological explanation even ‘necromancy’ – the raising of the dead – can be explained rationally: the result of hypnosis/suggestion/hallucination. When Sara seemingly rises from her slab to confront Suzy, it may only be that Suzy ‘hallucinates’ this under the suggestion of Elena Markos (as is implied by Sara’s apparition ‘fading away’ when Suzy stabs the old witch to death). And the final destruction of the Tanz academy with its exploding lightbulbs and self-destructing walls might also be Suzy’s hallucination or telekinesis. Certainly her enigmatic smile at the end suggests that, having escaped the academy, she is already mentally shrugging off the ‘hysteria’ to which she and Sara and the others might have succumbed.

Sara's apparation fades ...Suzy emerges from her madness.

Either way, the ambiguities in Suspiria only add to the enjoyment of a great film that is already rich in allusions to everything from Freud to early German Expressionist horror films, to the writings of Poe and DeQuincey.

Tribute to Ken Russell

I was sad to hear about the death of Ken Russell.  He was one of my tutors when I studied in Southampton. ‘Tommy’ was a film that had inspired me to make some short films of my own so I remember being incredibly excited the first time he came in to take a film production workshop. I couldn’t stop talking – until he told me off!

It was fascinating to see him work, blocking out the scenes and correcting the line readings. People think of him primarily as a visual film-maker and forget that he worked with some of the finest actors, Glenda Jackson, Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Michael Caine, Vanessa Redgrave.  He had enormous skills as a director,  so he was rightly pissed off that no-one would fund his films any more or employ him to direct (this was in 1999). I remember him telling us that he had bought a Canon DV camera and set up a studio in his house. He made a film called ‘Fall of the Louse of Usher’ which is Ken Russell at his most eccentric.

When I was teaching at the Bournemouth film school I took a group of students to the Cherbourg film festival where Ken was the head of the jury. The highlight of the trip for me was a screening of ‘Tommy’ followed by a Q&A with Ken, and then later a private screening of student work with him and Hettie McDonald in attendance. He was very gracious in his feedback and encouraging to the students and afterwards we all got pissed on red wine. It was one of those things that you never forget – getting pissed with Ken Russell!
One thing he said was ‘Just keep making films, buy your own camera – fuck the studios’.  This is what he did.

A couple of years ago I went to an exhibition of his 1950s photography. He started off as a photographer and this exhibition in London was one of the last things he did, so I thought I would put up some of his photos as a tribute.

Thanks, Ken. You will be missed.

Notes on 'The Nanny' (1965)

Wes at Plutonium Shores put me on to this one in his excellent REVIEW. I hadn’t heard of the film but I watched it the other night and what a good film it is. It is impressed me so much that I wanted to add some thoughts of my own.

The Nanny is last of a series of ‘psycho-thrillers’ made by Hammer in the early 1960s (Fanatic, Maniac etc.) written by Jimmy Sangster. The interesting thing about it is that it isn’t really a thriller, more of a psychological drama about class in the style of Losey’s ‘The Servant’; a film with which (along with ‘Repulsion) it shares some striking similarities but actually pre-dates by a couple of years.

The Nanny opens with a young boy, Joey, returning home after being institutionalised for a breakdown following the death of his three-year-old sister. He has developed a pathological hatred for his nanny, played Bette Davies, whom he believes killed his sister and is now plotting to kill him.

Like ‘The Servant’, The Nanny concerns itself with the power struggle between an emotionally fragile upper-middle class family and the loyal (but as it turns out equally fragile) 'help' who is the bedrock of the household and has been for many years. What really impressed me about this film, though, is its tremendous compassion for the characters: all are victims of social conventions – even the father, who responds to family tensions by absenting himself, warrants sympathy.

The Nanny was made in 1965, a time when parenting-styles were changing. People were beginning to reject the doctrines of Frederick Truby King, who advocated a tough-love approach to child rearing, in favour of the ‘hugs-and-kisses’ ideas of Dr Benjamin Spock (no relation to Leonard Nimoy). The upper-middle class, were, however, still bound by the conventions of wet nurses, nannies and private boarding schools which inhibited a closer relationship between parents and children.

As Wes notes, ‘The Nanny’ is concerned with the dangers of the dysfunctional family unit. The mother in the film, played with extraordinary rawness by Wendy Craig, has been usurped by the Nanny as Joey’s primary carer and has fallen into a state of hysterical collapse because she feels she has no purpose within the family. This manifests itself in her psychological dependence on the nanny. Joey, on the other hand, resents the nanny because she is his main carer rather than his mother. For the nanny too, the situation is unhealthy; she has neglected her own daughter for sake of her adoptive family and has become equally dependent emotionally on providing them with the care that she has not been able to give her own flesh-and-blood.

Similar to ‘The Servant’ are the class anxieties that this situation throws up: reliance on the nanny conveys power to her, and the nanny exercises this power over Joey and Virginia when her position within the family is threatened.

It is at this point in the film that things threaten to spill into the territory of ‘Gothic Melodrama’ in the vein of Bette Davies’ previous films, ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane’ and ‘Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte’. It is to Sangster’s great credit that he manages not to do that. Instead he shows that it is overwhelming love and need for the children of her employees, who have taken the place of her own children, that has created an emotional ‘schizm’ in the nanny – she, too, is a victim of class social conventions and realises that the only solution is to leave the family.

Jimmy Sangster has reservations about the final scene of the film – which shows Joey and Virginia reunited following the nanny’s departure – but I felt that this gave the film a genuine progressive quality. It is only by breaking those social conventions that we can go on to have genuine ‘caring’ relationships.

No discussion of 'The Nanny' should fail to mention Seth Holt’s intelligent direction. The film is incredibly well made by Holt and his cameraman, Harry Waxman. Again, it pre-dates 'The Servant' in its use of deep focus photography to emphasise the power relationships within the family, which, together with Waxman’s low-key lighting, gives the film a claustrophobic feel at times. The performances are all excellent, particularly from Davies who imbues the film with emotional honesty in showing the part (that exists in all of us) that needs to give care to others.

So thanks to Wes for recommending this great film.

Vampire's Kiss (1989)

With anti-capitalist protestors in New York and London haranguing the poor old bankers I thought it was a good time to take a retrospective look at that short-lived subgenre of the 1980s – the ‘yuppy nightmare’ film and, in particular, the toothsome satire from 1989, Vampire’s Kiss.

What a feeling: Nick Cage is bitten by Jennifer Beales ...

Vampire’s Kiss was written by Joseph Minion, whose first screenplay, After Hours (1986) pretty much set the template for the ‘yuppy nightmare’: a young upwardly mobile city dweller falls foul of a dark criminal underworld after being lured in by the promise of a woman. As a kind of Dante’s Inferno for the Reagan era, it gave rise to some of the decade’s most interesting films, including Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild (1987), and perhaps most notably, Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986).

The yuppy nightmare played on the white middle class guilt of the affluent new breed of city professional profiting from short-term economic policies (the so-called Reaganomics) that led to stockmarket bubbles and a boom in consumer credit, but also widened the gap between the rich and poor, creating (particularly in the United States) a burgeoning underclass.

In Vampire’s Kiss, Nicolas Cage plays a young upwardly Manhattan publisher who spends his evenings picking up woman in nightclubs and taking them back to his gothic-looking brownstone apartment for casual sex. One night he meets a seductive vamp (Jennifer Beales) with a taste for blood and a nice pair (of fangs). Before he is knows it, Cage is spiralling into madness, believing himself infected with the ‘curse’ of the undead and finding himself compelled (as Jack Nicholson says in The Departed) to ‘act accordingly’.

...which makes him buy cheap plastic snappers...

Like Romero’s ‘Martin’ we never really believe that Cage is truly joining the ranks of the undead  - he just thinks he is - therein lies the satire of the film, and the basis of some deliciously dark humour. Lacking the traditional vampire accoutrements, Cage is forced to sleep under his upturned sofa in lieu of a coffin and to don a cheap pair of plastic fangs – the kind you might find in a joke shop - because he only has five dollars on him at the time of purchase. Also like Martin, Cage’s image of what it is to be a vampire is entirely shaped by his exposure to popular media, in this case a late night viewing of Murnau’s Nosferatu. Therefore Cage gradually transforms into Max Shreck, until he is stalking nightclubs in his fangs leering crazily at the women, in search of a victim. They think his vampire stance is an act, that he is joking around, but we know it isn’t.

...turn slowly in to Max Shreck from Nosferatu...

With it pretty much a given that Cage isn’t becoming a real vampire (the film hints heavily that Jennifer Beales is a figment of his imagination – a guilt-projection from his womanising past), Vampire’s Kiss digs deep into the aforementioned white male middle class guilt in showing Cage’s pathology. His main victim is his Latino secretary (Maria Conchito Alonso) whom he bullies mercilessly. When she has to take time off sick due to the stress, Cage - in a particularly uncomfortable-to-watch scene - takes a cab to her house so that he can continue the harassment there.  The film spends some time showing the lives of the poor working immigrant through Alonso’s character, in contrast to Cage’s privileged Manhattanite lifestyle. This gives some context to Cage’s peculiar guilt-based love-hate fixation on his secretary, whom he eventually attempts to rape: white middle class guilt sublimated into victimising the ‘despicable’ immigrant.

...sleep under his upturned couch in lieu of a coffin...

One of the criticisms of the 'yuppy nightmare' movie is that the audience is encouraged to wallow in the grimy world of the criminal underclass (almost like they did back in the Victorian age) before being allowed to denounce it.  In Blue Velvet, Jeffrey is recuperated into his white middle class world of picket fences and ‘healthy’ sex, ‘cured’ of his fascination with the seedy underworld of Frank Booth and Dorothy Vallens. To its credit, Vampire’s Kiss doesn’t do that. Cage’s character is not redeemed, nor does he ever regain our sympathy. Instead, as 'nosferatu', he has to suffer the inevitable (as Martin had to) in punishment for his excesses and those of his brethren. And it serves him right too. 

..and stalk nightclubs in search of victims.

Gallery

I am launching a new page on the blog, which I am calling the  'Gallery'

This is a collection of images, photographs, news footage and videos showing horror films as reflecting events in British and American history.

As George A. Romero said: "what's happening in the world creeps into any work - it just fits right in - because that's where it comes from, where you get the idea from in the first place."

The gallery will draw visual parallels between horror film images and contemporary history. 

The idea is also to showcase some of the images and captions that will illustrate my book Shocks to The System

The gallery will be an on-going project that I will update regularly. If you have any suggestions for images to include in the gallery I'd love to hear from you - please contact me here

Please do visit the Gallery (top right tab)  - warning: contains graphic images.

Horror Film Books

Taking my cue from Wes at Plutonium Shores I have put together a list of horror film books that I think are particularly good. Each title is linked to Amazon. Some are a little bit pricey! If you live in London or plan a visit I would highly recommend a trip to the British Film Institute Library where you can find most of these titles. Buy a day pass to their reading room - it's a treasure trove for film buffs and film scholars. I have spent many a happy day there researching Shocks to the System.


The Zombies that Ate Pittsburg: The films of George A. Romero - Paul R. Gagne (still the most comprehensive study of Romero's work - although it only goes up to Day of The Dead). Link

Wes Craven's Last House on the Left- David Szulkin (fascinating behind the scenes look at Craven's notorious film covering everything from the origins of its conception to its cultural impact) Link


English Gothic - Jonathan Rigby (excellent overview of the British horror film - including obscure wonders like Todd Slaughter) Link

Making Mischief: The cult films of Pete Walker - Steve Chibnall (Chibnall is the Walker expert - highly recommended) Link

Dark Carnival - David J Skal & Elias Savada (the only Tod Browning biography to have been written so far, to my knowledge, and brilliantly researched as you would expect from David Skal) Link

Shocking Representation - Adam Lowenstein (a fascinating critical study of the horror genre as allegory of historical trauma)  Link

The cinema of David Cronenberg - Ernest Mathijs (comprehensive critical study of Cronenberg's career from the early days of experimental shorts to Eastern Promises. Mathijs examines the production context of Cronenberg's films, their cultural context within Canadian cinema and their critical reception. Easily the best book on Cronenberg. Link


The cinema of George A. Romero - Tony Williams (Williams is the Romero expert - this is indespensible for Romero scholars) Link

George A. Romero Interviews - Tony Williams (a new book of interviews with Romero spanning his entire career - read my review here) Link

The Remarkable Michael Reeves - John B Murray (Excellent biography of the tragic British director) Link

Tod Browning (Hollywood Professional) - Stuart Rosenthal (an early critical study of Browning but still one of the best) Link


What the Censor Saw - John Trevelyan (fascinating memoir from the 1960s censor) Link


Horror in the Cinema - Ivan Butler (early survey of the genre but still very good - the section on Polanski's Repulsion is excellent) Link


Horror Movies - Carlos Clarens (another classic early survey) Link

Michael Reeves - Benjamin Halligan (excellent companion-piece to John Murray's biography. This one also offers an insightful critical appraisal of Reeves's films) Link

The Exorcist - Mark Kermode (Kermode is the expert on The Exorcist. What more can I say?) Link

Horror Films - James Marriot (very good and accessible survey of the genre from Virgin books) Link

James Whale - James Curtis (comprehensive and well-researched biography of the great British director) Link


Nightmare Movies - Kim Newman (newly revised and expanded - still one of the best and most accessible surveys) Link

Book of The Dead - Jamie Russell (the last word on zombie films from the brilliant FAB press) link

Horror Films of the 1970s/80s/90 (three volumes) - John Kenneth Muir (meticulously researched database including some of the more obscure releases from each decade) link

Beasts in the Cellar - John Hamilton (fascinating and detailed study of Tony Tenser's career as British horror producer in the 1960s and 1970s - another FAB press triumph) Link

Wounds of Nations - Linnie Blake (important study of horror films in relation to historical trauma and national identity. A dense, sometimes difficult read but a rewarding one) Link

Men, Women and Chainsaws - Carol J Clover (classic text on representation of gender in the horror film) Link

Dark Dreams - Charles Derry (another classic text - this one examines horror films by themic 'type') Link


Danse Macabre - Stephen King (proof of King's deep knowledge and understanding of the genre - entertaining too) Link


Night of The Living Dead Film-book - John Russo (Detailed behind the scenes account by the film's co-writer) Link


Poverty Row Horrors - Tom Weaver (excellent and unique look at horror films made by the poverty row studios - PRC, Republic, Monogram - in the 1940s) Link

Deformed Destructive Beings - George Ochoa (New book on the horror film by fellow blogger, George Ochoa) Link

Dario Argento - James Gracy (New book on Argento by fellow blogger and Fangoria writer James Gracy) Link

A Tribute to David Hess

David Hess died recently at the age of 69. By way of tribute I wanted to look at the part he played in the original Last House on the Left both as actor and composer. Of course, playing the role of ‘Krug’ was something of a mixed blessing for Hess. Although it was the big break in his acting career, he was to become typecast as a psychotic killer as a result (notably in House on the Edge of the Park), and his musical achievements have been somewhat overlooked.

Hess was first and foremost a singer- songwriter. He had begun his professional career under a pseudonym, David Hill, writing and performing “All Shook Up”, which Elvis Presley later made a hit.

Wes Craven hired him not just to act in Last House on the Left but also to compose the soundtrack. In interviews and commentaries on the film, Hess emerges as the collaborator who comes closest, with Craven, to understanding the moral complexities of the film, and this is evident, not just in his extraordinary portrayal of Krug (“a character just like anybody else…who just happens to kill people sometimes”) but also in his approach to creating the soundtrack.

The soundtrack to Last House on the Left is in itself lyrical, memorable and beautifully composed but it is in conjunction with the film that the full power and meaning of the music comes across. The same can be said about the film: the soundtrack and film are symbiotic.

What Hess detected in the screenplay was its sense of moral contradiction, its absurd violence. He is, for example, one of the few, who understands the ironic counterpoint of violence and buffoonish comedy in the film (“absurd violence – absurd comedy”) and his music for the film counterpoints the on-screen action in the same way, at first confusing the viewer’s responses but ultimately leading to a deeper engagement with the moral complexities of the film.

One of the most extraordinary scenes in Last House on the Left is Krug’s moment of self-revelation after raping Mari by the riverbank. It is both profoundly disturbing and strangely moving because - while Krug has committed the vilest of acts – the violation and humiliation of another human being – we cannot entirely distance ourselves from him. His reaction to what he has done – and the best way to describe it I think is to say he is shocked at himself, at his own depravity – elicits sympathy – however fleeting - because we suddenly see his vulnerability, and it forces us to recognise the aggressor in ourselves.

It is a beautifully edited scene by Craven – made up of gazes averted, fingers picking dirt from hands, clothes being straightened, but the moment is given its full disturbing power by Hess’s ballad which counterpoints the scene. The song – deeply ironic – is tender, plaintiff and speaks of loneliness and the search for comfort in a loveless environment (“Now you’re all alone, feeling that nobody wants you, and you’re looking for someone to hold your hand, someone who understands.”) - but its counterpointing with the scene brings out the full horror and sorrow of what has just taken place: the feeling of alienation, powerlessness and isolation that violence creates in both the victim and the aggressor - and also in the observer.

I remember when I first realised (after having seen the film) that the actor who played Krug and the singer-songwriter whose gentle voice graced the soundtrack were one and the same. I couldn’t believe that one man could portray such brutishness as an actor and at the same time create such poignant music - in the same film!

That, perhaps is the true testament to Hess’s achievement: his ability to encompass the moral contradictions of Last House on The Left (‘The duality of man’ as Jung said). While Craven has to an extent, distanced himself from the film over the years, following the effect it had on his personal reputation in the 1970s, Hess embraced the film, discussing it with insight during his appearances at conventions since its re-emergence on DVD in the late 1990s. His contribution to this most disturbing and haunting of films cannot be overestimated.

Review of George A. Romero Interviews

Of particular interest to Romero fans is this new collection of interviews edited by Tony Williams. Prof. Williams’s previous work includes the critical study The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of the Living Dead (Wallflower Press, London, 2003) and the acclaimed study of family in the horror film, Hearths of Darkness (Associated University Presses, London, 1996). The interviews in this new collection cover a period of over forty years – from 1969 to 2010 – spanning Night of the Living Dead to Survival of the Dead.  The interviews illustrate the various stages in Romero’s career with the majority covering the years from 1973 to 1982 – arguably Romero’s richest period creatively. 

Three of the interviews are conducted by Prof. Williams himself (including one taken especially for the book). Many are rare and difficult to find, including an important one from 1979 by Williams, Robin Wood and Richard Lippe at the Toronto Film Festival retrospective of horror films (the event for which Wood wrote his landmark essay, The American Nightmare). Also included is a Paul R. Gagne interview from 1985 - Gagne’s The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh (Dodd Mead, 1987) still being the most comprehensive book written on Romero – and two interviews by Dennis Fischer, who wrote the influential Horror Film Directors (McFarland and Co, 1991), including one previously unpublished that covers Bruiser.

There is much here for fans and scholars alike: Romero talks openly about the themes in his films (intriguingly, he speaks of Night as an allegory as early as 1973), about his artistic methods and his (often painful) experience in the film business. He is sometimes wary about pinning specific interpretations on his films but his commitment to social commentary is clear and consistent throughout. As critical appreciation increases over the years so do the quality of the interviews: those taken around 1982 show the director at the height of his powers, in complete command and knowing exactly what he wants to say. However, readers seeking the definitive Romero political ‘statement’ may be disappointed: when Robin Wood asks Romero his attitude to the possibility of social change, Romero by no means rejects notions of social engagement but says he doesn’t think of his work primarily in such terms; the desire to change society might be present but is not a primary conscious motivation. Instead of glib answers, what we get from Romero – in both his films and interviews - is the sense of his working through a complex set of ideas about society, the individual, communication and responsibility. This process is on-going and subject to refinement as each interview – and film - proves, but the themes themselves remain consistent and coherent.

Prof. Williams presents each interview in full with no evidence of editorial tinkering. At times this means some repetition; many of the interviews rehash Romero’s background and Night of the Living Dead. This also makes the featured chronology and filmography seem a little redundant. Romero scholars may experience déjà vu at times. Parts of the interviews, for example, have been quoted by Gagne in The Zombies that Ate Pittsburgh. Land of the Dead is under-represented: only a short piece is included which even then is more an article than an interview. This seems a bit slim considering the importance of Land as Romero’s return to the screen after several years away. Having said that, the interviews covering Romero’s experience in Hollywood 'developmental hell' prior to Land are particularly fascinating, detailing as they do his failed projects such as The Mummy and Resident Evil.

Prof. Williams omits an afterword from the collection; presumably so that more interviews can be added in future editions. Let’s hope that this is the case. Romero seems to have more films in him – Let’s hope he gets the chance to make them.

George A. Romero Interviews (ed. Tony Williams), University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 2011.

The Black Cat (1934)

Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat illustrates very clearly the concerns of the horror film in the mid-1930s. Frankenstein and Freaks had reflected the raised class consciousness brought about by the Depression which had led to Roosevelt’s New Deal. However, with the clouds of war gathering in Europe following Hitler’s rise to power, film-makers, by 1934, had become increasingly concerned with the spectre of catastrophe arising, once again, from Germany.

Essentially an allegory of the dark forces at play in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire following World War 1, The Black Cat concerns the unfinished business between Austrian psychiatrist, Dr. Werdergast (Bela Lugosi), and his architect friend, Poelzig, whose Bauhaus house (an ex- fortress) is built on the corpses of a battleground and undermined by dynamite. During the war Poelzig commanded the fortress which he is accused by Werdegast of having betrayed to the Russians, causing the death of thousands of Hungarians. A naïve American couple are drawn into this vendetta scenario with the two adversaries competing for their ‘souls’. Ulmer alludes to the ‘occultism’ underlying the Third Reich in the character of Poelzig, a Satanist. The film culminates in the sadistic flaying of Karloff by Lugosi in the former’s underground torture chamber and the subsequent detonation of the dynamite that brings about a new conflagration.

Ulmer’s film clearly conveyed the message that World War 1 had not been resolved:  the forces of chaos which had started that war could easily spark another. “The slightest mistake by one of us could cause the destruction of all” Werdegast warns at one point, voicing popular opinion at the time that World War 1 had been started by ‘mistake’.

It is easy to see why Universal baulked at the film in 1934, what with Hitler drawing on the Eugenics movement to preach Aryan superiority (using the United States 1932 Eugenics conference to justify his views) and international tensions rising following Germany’s massive rearmament programme. America had invested heavily in European war debts to keep the European economy afloat as a large consumer market for American goods. In effect, American commercial interests had financed Germany’s rebuilding and close relationships between American and German businesses now became an embarrassment following the Nazi rise to power. 

In Hollywood many were alarmed by Hitler’s anti-semitism (including Curtiz whose extended family were to perish in Auschwitz). Even conservative studio heads such as Louis B. Mayer joined the Anti-Nazi League. However, Joseph Breen was sensitive to the industry’s commercial interests in Germany and Anti-Nazi films were almost impossible to make under the Production Code.

But, as Richard Maltby has remarked of the Production Code, it ‘forced Hollywood to become ambiguous’. It can be seen that the horror films of the time addressed the issue of the increasing Nazi threat allegorically. Images of sadism and the ‘torture chamber’ as featured in The Black Cat became increasingly prevalent in films of the era, featuring strongly in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) and The Raven (1935), to name just two examples. The latter caused international protest at the potent image of its swinging pendulum: a literal sword of Damocles hanging over Europe...



Post-9/11 Horror Films

The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is perhaps an apt time to consider how horror films post-9/11 have responded to this national trauma and the War on Terror that followed.

The actual images of the twin towers falling and the destruction of Manhattan have, of course, become iconic to the age - just as the mushroom cloud was to the dawn of the atomic age in the 1950s - and science fiction/horror films made since 2001 have been replete in imagery of a destroyed New York . Cloverfield (2008), in its lo-fi handi-cam presentation of the city under attack, echoed the video footage of the twin towers at the point the planes hit – the chaos, the panic, the flight from ‘ground zero’ and the response of the emergency services in the moments that followed. The immediacy of the ‘actuality’ footage in Cloverfield seemed therapeutic in revisiting the trauma of 9/11 and contributed towards the film’s popularity.

I am Legend (2007), released the year before, also used the destruction of New York – alongside Will Smith - as a major selling point. I remember watching the trailer in the cinema and noting the unusual emphasis on showing Manhattan in ruins, so much so that the associations with 9/11 were unmistakable.

Roland Emmerich – that inveterate band-wagon jumper – had actually started this phase with The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Although he had trashed Manhattan before in Independence Day (1996) and Godzilla (1998), the serious tone of The Day After Tomorrow, appropriate in the light of 9/11, made it his best film. He followed it up with 2012 (2009) – another eco-disaster film that took much of its power from the apocalyptic destruction of the Big Apple – but the film was less successful financially, perhaps a sign that, by 2009, audiences were no longer in need of therapy for 9/11 because a new trauma – that of economic recession – had descended upon them.

In my post The Horror Film and Social Collapse I discussed the political implications of 9/11 and how, according to Joseph Stiglitz, America’s handling of Globalisation had contributed to the wave of anti-American feeling that led to the 9/11 attacks. Two films that dealt allegorically with the subsequent War on Terror – particularly the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – highlighted the shortcomings of the Bush administration and its militaristic foreign policy.

28 Weeks Later (2007)  depicted an Iraq-like ‘green zone’ and its breach by violent ‘insurgents’. The film focuses (as does Romero’s The Crazies - an obvious influence on 28 Weeks Later) on the military’s botched response to the outbreak of the rage violence which threatens to ‘infect’ everyone in the zone.  Unable to contain the outbreak, the military escalate the violence to the point where their only solution is to carpet bomb the whole area killing everyone in it. The film makes the point that responsibility is not always taken seriously by those who hold power.

Romero himself made the same point in Land of The Dead (2005). But whereas 28 Weeks Later offered a withering critique of America’s foreign policy, Land of the Dead criticises Bush’s domestic policy in the aftermath of 9/11. ‘We do not negotiate with terrorists’,  states Dennis Hopper’s Rumsfeld-like plutocrat, when faced by a revolt headed by the ethnic military man (read Bin Laden, Saddam Hussain, Gaddafi)  who up until then had been doing his dirty work. In the face of the zombie crisis, Hopper’s character has been feathering his own nest – and those of his cronies – Enron-like- in a literal tower while the ordinary people to whom he owes a responsibility are left to fend for themselves on the ground. Romero’s conclusions – that those in power during 9/11 have acted only to serve themselves – were firmly echoed by Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004).

Other horror films after 9/11 have addressed the issue of America's War on Terror more obliquely. 'Back woods' horror films like Wrong Turn (2003), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and The Hills Have Eyes (2006), spoke of the curtailing of liberties following 9/11 and, according to critic, Linnie Blake, the 'demonisation of difference' as the hillbilly figure in these films is presented both as a savage aggressor and a victim of the nation's attempts to marginalise those in society who refused to be assimilated into the dominant ideology (Muslims). This 'demonisation of difference' extended to those in other countries in Hostel (2005) and Hostel 2 (2007). Although some reviewers have claimed that Hostel criticises America's self-proclaimed role as 'policeman of the world' I would disagree. Rather than it being a critique of the American arrogance over foreign policy I would argue that the tropes of the film - and of others in the 'torture porn' subgenre - place it within the reactionary strain of horror films. These films amalgamate the 'slasher' - sexually curious teenagers are punished by torture and death - and the 'urbanoia' film - where the 'have-nots' (in the case of Hostel - the east-Europeans) are exterminated with impunity by the 'haves' (the Americans) for daring to rise up against them.

But whatever way you look at the horror films that followed 9/11, their success at the box office proves (in the words of Wes M at Plutonium Shores) that, 'during these turbulent times, audiences need that cathartic experience.'