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.'

New French Extremity

New French Extremity is the term coined for the series of transgressive films produced in France and Belgium in the last decade including works by auteurs Gaspar Noe, Claire Denis, Catherine Breillat, Francois Ozon, as well as individual titles such as Baise Moi, The Pornographer, Intimacy and In My Skin. These films, which have received considerable international attention, are characterised by a desire to shock, although critics are divided as to whether the deliberate breaking of taboos in these films is linked to a genuine desire on the behalf of the film-makers to shock audiences into political consciousness.  A number of distinguished horror films have been linked to the movement: Haute Tension, Frontiere(s), Inside, Martyrs, Seitan, Them and Calvaire.

Despite the emergence of the French  and Belgian horror film in recent years, Martyrs’ director, Pascal Laugier is quick to disabuse us of any notion that the horror genre has become part of French mainstream cinema:  ‘My country produces almost 200 films a year but there are only 2 or 3 horror films. It’s still a hell to find the money, a hell to convince people that we are legitimate to make this kind of film in France.’

This is, of course, reassuring as it suggests that the New French Extremity Movement (and the horror films within it) provides an alternative to French National Cinema, a challenge to national identities. But to what extent can these films in themselves be considered ‘progressive’? Certainly their tradition seems to be that of Bunuel, Franju, Clouzot – the tradition of French ‘shock’ art and literature originated by De Sade, Artaud, Bataille  – a tradition problematic  in itself, anchored as it is in the philosophy of nihilism, an extreme scepticism that denies all human values, all human forms of communication,  and therefore the possibility of progressive change. There is, to boot, a disturbing undercurrent of fascism in many of these films (Noe’s work strikes me as particularly problematic – especially in his treatment of homosexuality). This is, of course, not peculiar to French cinema – the whole ‘torture porn’ subgenre is redolent of it. However, the New French Extremity movement, can, I believe, be seen most significantly as a response to the rise of right-wing extremism in France during the last ten years (as personified by the figure of La Penn), a response that film-makers are in the process of working through.

Of all the horror films attached to the movement, Frontier(s)(2007) is perhaps the most progressive-minded. The plot concerns a family of degenerate murderers, led by a former (and still practicing Nazi) who imprison and torture a group of young people on the run who stumble into the family’s inn on the Belgian border. Set against a backdrop of Paris riots following the fictional election of an extremist right-wing candidate into the French presidency, Frontier(s) clearly functions as a political allegory about a degenerate-regressive ‘old guard’ set on annihilating the young.  The fact that the young people are a mix of races and sympathetically portrayed emphasises the Nazi undercurrents of the torture that they undergo at the hands of the elders. Director Xavier Gens explains that the story for Frontier(s) “came from events in 2002 when we had presidential elections in France. There was an extreme right party in the second round. That was the most horrible day of my life.”

The capture-torture motif of Frontier(s) is also central to Martyrs(2008), but in this film the political intentions are less overt, more ambivalent and ultimately nihilistic. The film begins with a young girl, Lucie, as she escapes from a disused abattoir where she has been imprisoned and physically abused by mysterious captors.  From there the film develops into a tale of friendship:  Lucie - tormented by ‘survivor guilt’ - is taken into care in an orphanage where she meets Anna, who attempts to help her.   Up to this point, Martyrs appears to be about the phenomenon of parents imprisoning their children in order to abuse them - a’ la Fred West and Josef Fritzl - and its psychological effects on the victims. But then Martyrs makes a sudden volte face as the mysterious captors are revealed to be a society of aged super-rich inflicting torture on young women in a bid to discover the secrets of the afterlife.  This shift in story direction comes across as muddled and confused (and somewhat unconvincing), and while there is no doubt that Martyrs is a visceral piece of work, this confusion about what it is trying to say, together with its unremitting bleakness, ultimately detracts from it being a better film. The overall impression is one of nihilism –  ‘putting the audience through it’  seems to be the film’s raison d’etre.  Martyrs is currently being remade by Daniel Stamm, director of The Last Exorcism (another film that falls down its final moments due to an ‘ideologically’ confused ending), who claims to be reworking the film to give ‘a glimmer of hope’.

Whereas Martyrs falls somewhere between a progressive and nihilistic vision (it does, after all, explore the notion of a degenerate older generation abusing its young), Inside (2007), falls into the category of reactionary horror film because of its dread of the woman’s body.  It concerns the attack and home-invasion of a young pregnant woman, by a mysterious stranger (played by Beatrice Dalle) who seeks to take her unborn baby. The film presents pregnancy and motherhood in a wholly negative light. Firstly, in Beatrice Dalle’s character is the personification of the ‘psychologically disturbed mother’ who would seek to harm another in her obsessive need for a child to replace the one she lost. Then there is the depiction of childbirth itself as something to be loathed (shown in the film as an impromptu Caesarian performed with a pair of scissors). Inside is a perfect case study in what Barbara Creed called the ‘Monstrous-Feminine, and a reminder that transgressive horror does not necessarily mean progressive or even subversive horror.

The horror films of the New French Extremity, then, can be seen as an off-shoot of the torture porn subgenre, and like 1930s horror films such as The Raven (1935) and The Black Cat (1934) pre-occupied with sadism and torture imagery, reflecting the rise of fascism in an era of economic collapse.  As the European Debt Crisis deepens it will be interesting to see what direction the movement takes; whether it will continue apace or lose its impetus in the face of industry recession and increased censorship.

Scala Forever!

If you are in London between now and the 2nd of October check out this series of screenings in honour of the Scala Cinema Club. Follow the link for details:

http://scalaforever.co.uk/

The Scala was,  for me, London's best repertory cinema and a mecca for cult/underground film fans. Some of the films I first saw there were: Tetsuo, Santa Sangre, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Cafe Flesh, Thundercrack!, Faster Pussycat Kill Kill! Singapore Sling and many more. The Scala did some great double & triple bills. I remember seeing Eraserhead with Blue Velvet and two early Lynch shorts: The Grandmother and Alphabet; a fantastic DePalma triple of Body Double/Dressed to Kill/Blow Out, and I saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre there at least three times (on a grainy 16mm print - all that was available as the film was still banned in the UK at the time) paired with Motel Hell and The Hills Have Eyes. One of the great things about the Scala was that, as a cinema club, the films were uncertificated. Their crowning glory was their regular all-nighters. I particularly remember an Argento all-nighter(Suspira/Inferno/Tenebrae/Opera) which I stumbled out of with a blinding headache but exhilarated (probably as much from the occasional whiff of dope that wafted across the seats as from the films -I'm not a big Argento fan). Some people would bring sleeping bags and doze through films they didn't care for.

My first visit to the Scala was in 1986 when I travelled to London for a movie marathon that started with a 70mm screening of Aliens at the Odeon Leicester Square, followed by a trip to the Cannon Wardour Street for the first run of Romero's Day of the Dead, and then after a few pints in the West End it was off to the Scala for a Romero all-nighter of Night/Martin/Dawn/Creepshow and The Crazies. The seedy ambience of the Scala (and its unbelievable repertory of films) was a revelation. As I headed home on the train early the next morning, bleary-eyed but happy, I vowed to return to this amazing cinema, and when I later moved to London I did - many times.

In 1993 The Scala Cinema Club went into receivership after losing a court case following an illegal screening of A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick and Warner Brothers did cult movie fans a big disservice.

Now film clubs and rep cinemas such as the Ritzy in Brixton are hosting a programme of screenings in the spirit of the old Scala Cinema Club, including a 'Scala Day' of documentary, talks and discussion on the future of repertory cinema, at the Scala itself on Saturday 17th September.

Ira Levin


In my post on The Last Exorcism, I cited The Exorcist as one of the few novels to hit the three points of what I call the ‘horror triangle’: in other words the story works on supernatural and psychological levels, but there is an additional sociological subtext present. I would include Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby as one of those few novels alongside The Exorcist to function on all three levels.

Stephen King described Levin as a storyteller whose tales are constructed with ‘the precision of a Swiss watch’, and Rosemary’s Baby is certainly a first rate psychological/supernatural thriller. But consider that novel alongside his other work, such as The Stepford Wives, and you have social/political comment par excellence.

Written in 1967 and inspired, at least in part, by celebrity Satanist Anton LaVey, Rosemary’s Baby cleverly keyed in to a growing interest in the occult (as popularised by rock groups like The Rolling Stones), mysticism and psychedelic ‘experience’. This seeking meaning in alternative religions has been described by scholars such as Joseph Laycock as ‘folk piety’, a symptom of the breakdown of traditional religion in the modern age combined with a residual desire to believe in the spiritual. In Rosemary’s Baby, to Levin’s credit, we never really know if Rosemary is truly experiencing the supernatural or simply some form of personal and group hysteria. This is admirably reinforced in the film by Polanski’s refusal to show the ‘demon child’ at the end; we are forced to experience events subjectively through Rosemary’s point of view (in both the film and the novel). The effect on the viewer/reader is powerful.

It was perhaps too powerful for Levin’s liking: he is one of the few novelists to despair at the success of his own work, regretting that Rosemary’s Baby might have helped perpetuate Christian fundamentalism in America (although he joked that he didn’t regret it enough to return the profits from the book). Levin saw himself as a Progressive and the socio-political ‘message’ of The Stepford Wives is more up-front (he quotes Simone De Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex’ in the forward). Intriguingly, Levin develops the feminist subtext of Rosemary’s baby in the later novel. We can see this as coinciding with the rise in second-wave feminism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The feminist subtext of Rosemary’s Baby is, of course, already clear for those who want to see it: Rosemary’s body is controlled by the patriarchy (in this case her husband, the male –led witch coven and Satan) for the purposes of reproduction.

In The Stepford Wives, the woman’s body itself is cloned and replaced by that of a cyborg, such is the ‘threat’ presented by the individual identity of woman to the patriarchy of the story. Rosemary was quite content to be a wife, home-maker and mother but the heroine of The Stepford Wives has to turned into an android before she accepts her lot: Joanna has an identity beyond that of housewife; as befitting a liberated woman of the 1970s, she has aspirations of her own (as a photographer). Levin makes the feminist message the main discourse of The Stepford Wives and underplays the ‘thriller’ aspects.

But more than that: in the town of Stepford, Levin represents the politically regressive provinces that exists in the suburbs of American and British cities; the land of Parent-Teacher Associations and Christian groups who campaign vociferously against the ‘permissive society’. These ‘Stepfords’ exist, and for this reason it may be that, of the two novels, The Stepford Wives emerges as the more enduring work.

Jeff Lieberman

Jeff Lieberman (perhaps best known for Squirm, 1976) remains a critically neglected director within the horror genre. Although admittedly not in the same ‘league’ as Romero, Craven, Carpenter, Hooper, Cronenberg etc., his films are like the mortar between the bricks of these film-makers, extending and enriching sub-genres within horror cinema. Squirm is one of the best ‘creature features’ derived from Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963); Blue Sunshine (1978) (a true progressive horror film in its depiction of 1960s ideals destroyed from within by self-serving opportunism) spans the ‘invasion-metamorphosis horror’ gap between Shivers (1975) and Dawn of The Dead (1978), paving the way for the latter; Just Before Dawn (1981) picks up and develops the tropes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Hills Have Eyes (1976) (although the conscious influence on Lieberman was Deliverance, both the book and the film) and Satan’s Little Helper (2003) riffs intriguingly on Halloween (1978).

His films bristle with intellect. Lieberman is not an originator or a genre innovator; he is a magpie who steals from the nests of other directors. But the treasures he steals glister brightly, and he displays them magnificently.

Perhaps more than any other director, Lieberman has the ability to crystallise the essence of a subgenre in a single striking image.

In Blue Sunshine, we have the psychotic babysitter stalking her young charges with a large knife; her ‘invasion-metamorphosis’ is signified by her bald head – her ‘possession’ by the visual reference to Rosemary’s Baby (1968).

Babysitter with a knife: Blue Sunshine (1978)

In Just Before Dawn, there is the stunning moment where our heroine fends off her backwoods attacker by thrusting her fist down his throat (an inversion of the rape/violation imagery redolent of the ‘urbanoia’ film, notably the gun-in –the –woman’s-mouth scene in The Hills Have Eyes).

A fist down the throat: Just Before Dawn (1981)

In Squirm, we have three such moments, each encapsulating the three stages of narrative progression in the ‘nature rises up against us’ subgenre: proliferation – the scene where worms infest the face of the antagonist, Roger; besiegement – where the worms threaten to erupt from a showerhead on to our unwitting heroine (also, of course, a sly nod to Psycho – linking via The Birds to Hitchcock – see what I mean about the keen intellect?) Finally annihilation – when the worms invade the house and Roger sinks into them like a man disappearing into quicksand.

The worms claim Roger: Squirm (1976)

These iconic moments encapsulate the narrative conventions of their subgenres (the ‘nature horror’, the ‘backwoods horror’, the ‘zombie-metamorphosis horror’) unlike any other. Perhaps that’s why, despite a lack of recent critical attention for the films, these images featured so often in the horror film books and magazines of the 1970s.

It is a measure of the neglect in which Lieberman currently stands that his films have received patchy distribution on DVD.  Only Just Before Dawn and Satan’s Little Helper are available on UK cert R2, the former transferred from a very shoddy print. The American R1 of Just Before Dawn is of similar poor quality but includes a ‘Making of’ and interviews with cast and crew.  MGM released Squirm in 2003 on R1 only. The transfer is good (although the night scenes are a bit murky). Blue Sunshine is available in a double disc presentation from Synapse films on R1 (and a similar Dutch R2). This set includes a bonus CD of the film’s soundtrack, together with an early Lieberman short, 'The Ringer', and a substantial interview, ‘Lieberman on Lieberman’, which is a must for anyone wanting more information on this important director - very little exists on him any elsewhere.

Pete Walker

Although he has been retired from film-making since the mid-1980s, Pete Walker made a rare live appearance in a Q&A at the British Film Institute in 2009 (see video of the Q&A below). Best known for his ‘terror’ films written with David McGillivray (House of Whipcord, 1974, Frightmare, 1974, House of Mortal Sin, 1976), Walker loved to cause controversy by taking pot shots at the pillars of the British establishment such as the church, the penal system and the family. His films came out at a time when Britain was going through something of a sexual revolution thanks to the social reforms of the 1960s Wilson government, which saw a relaxation of laws on abortion, homosexuality and divorce. The inevitable moral backlash that followed this in the mid-1970s, led by people like Lord Longford and Mary Whitehouse, threatened a return to Victorian values and it was this that Walker and McGillivray kicked against in their wickedly enjoyable films.

Despite the cultural importance of Walker's films, which is only now becoming fully recognised thanks to Walker scholars such as Prof. Steve Chibnall, Walker is modest about his own achievements.  “The films were never as good as I wanted them to be," he says, "not enough money or time”. He was, however, a director of considerable skill. House of Mortal Sin, in particular, shows a mastery of the camera few ‘exploitation’ directors achieve in their careers.

Walker started making ‘terror’ pictures in the early 1970s after several years making soft-core sex films. Although profitable, he found the soft porn film rather boring because “the sex stopped the plot”. A gifted raconteur with a background as a stand up comic in the final days of music hall, Walker wrote the scenarios for many of his films. In his collaborations with McGillivray, Walker decided the storyline and McGillivray scripted the scenes. An admirer of Hitchcock, Walker always included a set piece murder in his films and his best work showcases his skills in creating suspense sequences, such as the first murder in The Comeback (1980).  

When the British film industry all but collapsed in the 1980s, Pete Walker quit film-making to go into property development, buying and refurbishing cinemas. It was the biggest loss to the British horror film since the death of Michael Reeves.