The Violent Kind (2010)

The Violent Kind, the Butcher Brothers’ follow up to their 2006 The Hamiltons, seems to have divided critics and fans alike; some see it as an original and highly unpredictable genre ‘mash up’ combining elements of the bike movie, Lovecraftian horror and alien invasion sci-fi. Others see it as a rambling incoherent mess that leaves viewers scratching their heads. I watched the film with limited knowledge of it, expecting a cross between The Sons of Anarchy and The Devils Rejects (which it is - and more). The Hamiltons was an incisive look at violence as inherent in the American family, which gradually morphed into a tale of vampirism. This led me to expect The Violent Kind to be a study of violence ingrained within the American psyche as engendered in popular culture by the Hells Angels movement. Having seen the film I still think that this is, at heart, what The Violent Kind is about, and the genre-bending in the movie makes sense, at least for me, when the film is read this way.

The film opens with a pre-credits sequence that establishes the bikers as the ‘violent kind’. Cody, the anti-hero and ‘deputy’ of The Crew, a second-generation Californian biker gang, is waiting with his cronies outside a house while their leader Q, finishes fucking his girlfriend (an act that climaxes with the girlfriend punching him full in the face). Two hicks pull up in their pick up, looking for Q, who is a drug-dealer. They have a beef with him, which is swiftly settled by violence, coldly meted out on the hicks by Q and Cody.  Afterwards, Q ensures that the hicks are safely returned to their truck so they can drive off. No hard feelings. Violence is clearly a way of life for this gang.

Later, the gang go to Cody’s mother’s old house in the woods to celebrate her 50^th birthday in typical biker fashion. Here there are some soap opera elements typical of a biker movie. Cory’s ex-girlfriend, Michelle, has a new boyfriend. Cody is not happy, but gets talking to Michelle’s younger sister, Megan, who always liked him and wrote to him while he was in prison. There is also unresolved sexual tension between Cody and Shade, Q’s aforementioned girlfriend with the right hook. So far so Wild Angels. (I was also reminded of the PG rated biker gang in Mask) Cody is exactly the character that Jack Nicholson would have played in Roger Corman’s 1960s biker movies.

Then the film takes a turn towards genre shifting, as Michelle returns to the house, having previously left with her boyfriend, all beaten and bloody. She has been viciously attacked but we are not sure by whom or what. While the others go to investigate, one of the gang sexually assaults Michelle while she sleeps (further developing the violence/depravity theme) and she appears to respond to his advances, but then attacks him, biting into his face (a shocking scene of cannibalism reminiscent of Claire Denis’s Trouble Every Day). It soon becomes clear that Michelle has become possessed but by whom or what it is not clear.  We seem to be moving into Evil Dead territory at this point.

However, the Butcher Brothers wrong-foot us again shortly afterwards by introducing a home invasion scenario as a bizarre retro-gang of rockabillies imprison Cody, Shade, Megan and Q. They claim to have come to retrieve ‘what is inside Michelle’ (and later perform a bizarre ceremony that is part demon invocation/part extraterrestrial encounter ala The Fourth Kind) for the most part however, their motives are to torture and torment the bikers.

This constant genre-shifting makes The Violent Kind either engrossing or infuriating, depending on your point of view. It may appear an arbitrary mix at first, but the setting of the film provides a unifying context. California, and particularly the San Francisco area and Sonoma Valley where The Violent Kind was filmed, has a history of cultism spanning the Hells Angels, the Manson Family and UFOlogy, all of which The Violent Kind references. The Californian counter-culture of the 1960s, which gave rise to the Haight-Ashbury hippy movement, also housed the Hells Angels (whose HQ was directly opposite the Grateful Dead’s pad in the Haight) and Charles Manson and alien abductions. The Violent Kind links these three areas of cultism as holding a particular cultural fascination in the American psyche because of their inherent violence.

The Manson murders still resonate today with Californians, who struggle to understand the reasons why they happened. San Francisco and Los Angeles are considered by the people who live in them to be liberal towns; Los Angeleans and San Fransciscans think of themselves as easy-going. The cultural firmament that gave rise to the Manson killings in the 1960s still troubles these modern Americans. This trauma is still being played out in films as recent as The Strangers and Mother’s Day. Interestingly,  The Violent Kind subverts the usual scenario, as the representatives of the dark counterculture (the bikers) are the victims in the story rather than the victimisers. Their attackers are ‘them’ in a sense but fifty years before: a biker gang from the 1950s who disappeared mysteriously years ago. That this 1950s gang should engage in the same violent behaviour as the modern bikers (using switch blades rather than sheaf knives) is befitting in terms of the film’s theme: violence is inherent in the American subculture – always has been, always will be. The fact that this 1950s gang has, in the film, been a victim of alien abduction/body invasion, is also telling in terms of UFOlogy, which, at its heart, is obsessed by violence done towards the human body by extraterrestrial beings: the notion of being ‘abducted’ for ‘human experiments’.

These themes are bound together by the central section of the film that present the possession scenario, in which an invading entity takes control of the body and compels it towards violence. The Violent Kind is ultimately presenting the American counterculture of the 1950s/60s/70s as possessed by a ‘force’ that leads it into violence. That force might be alien or it might be inherent, but it has become deeply ingrained in the American psyche, passed down through the generations, and is likely to explode again as it did in the late 1960s. The ending of The Violent Kind suggests that this violence may begin within the subculture but it eventually spills out into the American mainstream as it did in Kent State and at Altamont in 1970.

All in all, The Violent Kind is a worthy successor to The Hamiltons, amply fulfilling the promise of that film and building on its themes of violence as inherent in the American psyche.  I found it an intriguing and assured piece of work, and it set me wondering why The Butcher Brothers are not yet receiving the same critical attention that other directors such as Ti West and Bryan Bertino currently enjoy. 

The Woman (2011)

I finally got to see this last night, long after the controversy over the film has died down – possibly a good thing. I approached the film knowing very little about it or the debates that followed the film on its release a year ago, or even about the director, Lucky McKee. I saw his Masters of Horror entry Sick Girl a few years ago, but frankly it didn’t leave much of an impression. I came to The Woman, then, fairly 'cold'.

On the surface, The Woman raises questions about gender relations in modern society, while comparing notes with Deliverance (1972) in portraying civilisation as a thin veneer for the beast that lurks within. The premise is a variation of the German fairytale, Iron John, about a wild man who is discovered in the woods, captured by soldiers, imprisoned and ‘tamed’. Iron John also became the basis for a famous book of the same name by Robert Bly, which led to the ‘Masculinist’ movement in the United States in the 1990s; a grassroots movement claiming that masculinity was in crisis due to social and family breakdown and advocating that men should concentrate on developing masculine traits in themselves and their sons.  Although not necessarily seen as a backlash against feminism, the Masculinist movement in popular culture can be seen in the surfeit of ‘survivalist’ gameshows and ‘boys adventure’ stories on TV, and also in the lads-mags phenomenon, which tend to show men as half adults, trapped somewhere between childhood and maturity, a state in which they find it hard to become responsible leaders, carers and fathers, which in turn leads to the passing down of that immaturity through the generations.

In part, The Woman satirises this through its portrayal of the main character, Chris Cleer, a man who feels that his masculinity is constantly under threat and goes to increasingly desperate lengths to protect it. As a study of such a male, The Woman succeeds really well – for the most part. In other respects though, McKee’s film is a bit hazy in what it is trying to say.

The Woman herself functions in a similar way to the Terence Stamp character in Pasolini’s Theorem (1968), in that she forces each of the family members to confront what until now they have tried to conceal in order to operate as part of a family. To Chris she represents what he would like to achieve through his hunting trips but fails to do: namely to be at ‘one with nature.’  His attempt to ‘civilise’ the Woman is a really a desire to subjugate her to his will absolutely, to achieve a complete domination over her that is impossible to do with his family without the family unit breaking down (which is of course what happens in the end when he finally loses control of himself and beats up his wife). Not only does the Woman represent the complete self-awareness that Chris lacks, she ultimately embodies the perceived threat that women pose to his masculinity. Throughout the film Chris increasingly resents his actions being questioned by the women around him, and finally explodes when the young teacher appears to question his abilities as a father. His failings have clearly been passed down to his alienated son (whom, for example, he doesn’t take on his hunting trips with him). The son, disturbed by the gradual disintegration of the family also chooses to blame women for his problems, using the captive Woman as an outlet for his sadism. The mother, played by Angela Bettis, represses her anger at her husband’s increasingly unreasonable behaviour towards The Woman, out of a responsibility towards her children. She does not want to rock the boat. Meanwhile, the eldest daughter holds deep misgivings towards her father, which The Woman brings to the fore.

Gradually, the family is forced, through Chris’s behaviour, to confront these things, and The Woman build to a tremendous head of steam, as each member of the family is forced to choose his or her allegiances. Frustratingly though, the film suddenly unravels, losing its way in the final sequences. Firstly, McKee plants the suggestion that Chris is the father of his daughter’s child, something suggested but not confirmed. Secondly comes the revelation that Chris is keeping a second feral child - ‘Socket’ – captive: what are we to make of this? Is Socket another of member of the Woman’s clan? The Woman’s child? Or is she Chris and his wife’s child that they have rejected due to birth defects? The film does not make this clear. Then the film climaxes in a sequence of extreme (and slightly ludicrous) gore, which also tends to undermine what has gone before; the savagery, indiscriminately meted out by the feral women feels like a descent into nihilism - or maybe, like the grunge soundtrack, just an attempt to please the gore fans. In particular the fate of the mother seems ill-judged. She has clearly made a journey from subjugation to strength, and yet is punished for it (presumably for her complicity in the incest?). The killing of the female teacher feels like a scapegoat or sacrificial killing on the part of McKee and Ketchum. Finally the Woman and Socket are revealed as cannibals but to what purpose?

As a director, McKee makes sometimes bold stylistic choices, but there are times when his uncertainty also shows in the storytelling devices. Early sequences use dissolves whose purpose is unclear.  Some of the early scenes are confusing. His use of grunge songs on the soundtrack instead of a traditional score is sometimes striking, but more often gets in the way. Again their purpose is unclear; perhaps they are an attempt to ‘counterpoint’ the action but mostly fail to do this. Most of the story is up front which tends to underplay mystery and suspense in the earlier sequences. However, the filmmakers are deliberately showing their hand in adopting these stylistic choices, alerting us, as it were to their presence, and this invites us to read The Woman as the desire to make a statement, even if, at times it is unclear exactly what the statement is.

Starburst Magazine Issue 377

June's issue of Starburst Magazine is out now - available from Forbidden Planet, WH Smiths, The Cinema Store (if you live in the UK) and from the Starburst website.

In this month's issue I interview the stars of Return of the Living Dead: Brian Peck, Jewel Shephard and the legendary Linnea Quigley. I get the low down on behind the scenes of ROTLD from Brian and Jewel, as well as background to a whole host of Linnea Quigley movies from the 'Scream Queen' herself, including the cult classics Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988), Savage Streets (1984) and Creepozoids (1987). I even get to the bottom of why Don't Go Near The Park (1981) is so abysmal...

In this Month’s issue...

Genesis of Ridley Scott’s upcoming blockbuster PROMETHEUS/Starburst Flashback John Brosnan vs Dan O’Bannon/Interview with Michael Biehn/Aliens in Comics/Bond/Interview with Looper Director Rian Johnson/Doctor Who/Ridley Scott Retrospective plus news, reviews and more from the world of Sci-Fi, Horror and Fantasy.

Return of the Living Dead Returns!

Dan O'Bannon's classic 1985 schlockfest comes out on Blu Ray on 4th June in a Special Edition. As well as containing four hours of extras, including the excellent making of documentary, More Brains!, this re-release (also on DVD) reinstates the original 1985 soundtrack. Read my review here.

Watch out for issue 377 of Starburst Magazine, in which I interview ROTLD stars Jewel Shepard, Brian Peck and the legendary Linnea Quigley. And I write about Dan O'Bannon's rarely-seen early student shorts Bloodbath (1969) and Foster's Release (1970), the latter of which, it is claimed, had a major influence on John Carpenter when he came to make Halloween (1978).

Issue 377 is available at WH Smiths. Or you can order from the Starburst website from 18th May.

Review of Osombie (2012)

Osama Bin Laden rises from the dead as a flesh-eating ghoul and threatens the free world with a zombie apocalypse.

No, really. That's the premise of 'Osombie', from Utah-based company Arrowstorm Entertainment.

Biting political satire or ludicrous jingoistic nonsense?

You can read my review here!

WIN OSOMBIE ON BLU RAY: Starburst Magazine have five copies of the blu ray to give away.

For details go here.

Stake Land (2010)

Try as I might I can’t get up the same enthusiasm for Cabin in the Woods as most people. It may well be a ‘game changer’, as many critics claim, but I find its approach uninteresting. Despite its qualities as a ‘meta-narrative’, its mode of address seems very much confined to mainstream horror, its criticisms are very much of mainstream horror, and it is forced (by virtue of being a studio film) to be mainstream horror – albeit one trying to do something ‘clever’. Its reflexivity does not, to my mind at least, ultimately offer up any genuine insight (beyond, perhaps, the idea that horror stories serve to keep primal forces at bay) or anything that hasn’t been said before by people like Wes Craven.

Stake Land, on the other hand, which I saw last night, did not have the shackles of mainstream studio production (which probably accounts for its patchy distribution) but succeeds through its mix of cultural references to be very insightful indeed. I can’t recall another horror film which makes such strong connections to the Great Depression through cultural references to that period of American history as represented in film, photography and literature. No surprise that one of the creative forces behind the film was Larry Fessenden, who has probably done more than anyone to promote independent horror production in the last ten years, and has a genuine sense of the subversive potential of the genre.

The story is very similar to that of Zombie-Land (2009). Martin, a teenage boy who has lost his family, teams up with a grizzled vampire-hunter known only as ‘Mister’, and together they embark on a road trip through an apocalyptic landscape, heading towards what they hope will be a better place in Canada. Along the way they experience hardship, loss, human kindness (in some of the encampments they stop at) and its opposite (in their encounters with The Brotherhood, a right-wing fundamentalist group who rule the South). The vampire threat (like the zombie threat in Romero’s films) is largely secondary. The main concern of the film is surviving in a bleak landscape following social collapse, where humanity is at a premium.

Co-writer/director Jim Mickle consciously referenced the Great Depression in choosing to set much of the film in rural Pennsylvania, giving the film “a dustbowl depression look, not some futuristic, apocalyptic look, but more little kids running around in potato sacks”. As the film unfolds, one becomes aware of images that strongly invoke the famous Depression-era photography of Dorothea Lange. We see families stranded at the side of the road in broken down cars; people living in shanty towns; possessions and clothes being bartered in street markets. This, of course invites an allegorical reading of the film, which Mickle has, himself, welcomed. “People have seen the film as a critique of capitalism, greed or extremism, and I’d agree that it’s meant to be a cautionary tale.”

The film is beautifully photographed by Ryan Samul, and another conscious reference is Terrence Malick’s Depression-era drama, Days of Heaven (1978). Samul’s approach strongly echoes the work of Nestor Almendros, especially in the use of 'magic hour' filming; its bleached landscapes owe a great deal to that film. Indeed, the Terrence Malick influence can also be felt in the use of voice-over narration, given by a teenager, which forms the emotional core of the film.

However, the overriding reference in Stake Land is to The Grapes of Wrath (1940), John Ford’s film based on Steinbeck’s classic novel, and the plot echoes that of Steinbeck in several ways. In Ford’s film, unemployed Oklahoma farmworkers travel to California in search of work in the fields. This is similar to the protagonists’ plight to reach the ‘New Eden’ in Stake Land. The hardship along the way threatens, in Steinbeck’s story, to erode the family and with it the very fabric of American society. In Stake Land, the protagonists form a ramshackle family which is constantly undermined by the vampires, the Brotherhood, and the day-to-day hardship of survival. Martin briefly finds a surrogate mother in Kelly McGillis, a nun who they rescue from The Brotherhood, but she is taken from him almost as soon as he finds her, and not once but twice. Other family members come and go, but in the end, it is always only Martin and Mister left, and it seems, like in Steinbeck, that any form of normal family life is going to be an impossibility. Steinbeck, in 1939, was talking about the break-up of thousands of families during the Depression, caused by mass migration. In Stake Land, ‘Mister’ repeatedly voices the impossibility of maintaining family ties in a survival situation: “I’m not your father” he reminds Martin constantly.

And yet, there is a rich seam of humanity that runs through Stake Land. In a scene which closely mirrors a section in Grapes of Wrath, the survivors chance upon an encampment where they briefly experience human hope again for the first time in months. Strangers in the camp revel in each other’s company; social contact is renewed; people dance together in the street. This is the ‘Weedpatch Camp’ of Steinbeck’s novel: housing built for migrant workers by the government’s Farm Security Administration to provide a decent hygienic environment for families – an alternative to the dirty squalid camps established by the farmers and growers. In Ford’s film, a group of deputies attempt to have ‘Weedpatch Camp’ closed down, so that their bosses - the farmers and growers - can once again exploit and harass the farm workers. In Stake Land, no sooner than the human spirit can re-establish itself in the encampment, the reactionary Brotherhood seeks to destroy it. The means by which they do so is one of the film’s most astonishing moments. We, the audience, as well as Martin and Mister, struggle at first to understand what is happening. Then the sheer malice of it is brought home, in the same way as, in Grapes of Wrath, the malice of the bosses is underlined by their desire to wreck the ‘Weedpatch Camp’.  Stake Land’s conclusion is similar to Steinbeck’s in that respect: it is not the vampires or the Depression that cause the greatest threat to humanity, but those who would seek to exploit the disaster to increase their own power and/or financial gain.

Whether this is currently true in the recession-gripped United States with regards to Christian fundamentalism (as Mickle seems to suggest) I cannot say. One of the criticisms of Stake Land is that it perhaps tries to reference too many things at once. Not only are there the references to the Great Depression and Christian fundamentalism, but also to the western genre. This leads to some messiness in the plot development towards the end. To reach a logical conclusion in terms of the apocalyptic/Steinbeck storyline, the family must perish, with only Martin and Mister left to roam the country alone in perpetuity. However, western movie tropes call for the family to be preserved and for the individuality of the ‘pioneer spirit’ to be reaffirmed. In Stake Land, this means that there is a bit of to-ing and fro-ing in the final scenes, as a new character is introduced to take over from Mister as Martin’s ‘family’, so that Mister can do the Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) thing from The Searchers and continue to roam.

Having said that, Stake Land shows that great insight in horror films comes not necessarily from ‘reflexivity’ within the genre, but by a film combining cultural and historical references in a meaningful way.

Poltergeist (1982)

I saw this again recently for the first time in years. Somewhat written off nowadays as a horror film for kids (can anyone else think of another horror film where nobody actually dies?) I was surprised to find myself reading some interesting subtext into the film as I watched. Although, with Spielberg’s subsequent development as a ‘serious’ film-maker in the interim, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that Poltergeist contains some intriguing social commentary relating to the Reagan era.

Of course, back in 1982, there was controversy over the uneasy collaboration of Spielberg and director Tobe Hooper. Nominally the producer of the film, Spielberg also gets credit as the main writer, and the consensus of the time was that Poltergeist reflected Spielberg’s thematic concerns more than Hooper’s. However, I would suggest that the mix is richer than previously thought, and that Poltergeist is a more complex amalgam of Hooper and Spielberg than it has been credited as being.

Hooper generally takes credit for the socio-political allegory in his films. “"I can't help but be a part of the times.” Hooper is quoted as saying. “I just think that film, for the serious filmmaker, is an osmosis of the times. That's usually what I tap for my resources: I look around at what's happening politically and economically. I don't know, it's all over me anyway. I'm totally absorbed in things like CNN."

Spielberg has shown a more general anxiety about war, genocide and the cold war ethos. These anxieties have revealed themselves repeatedly in his films, like Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List and War of The Worlds. There is that chilling sequence in the otherwise lacklustre Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull where Jones happens upon a deserted white picket fenced American town (very much like the one in Poltergeist) and comes to realise it is a testing site for the atom bomb. That sense of destruction of an idealised American way of life by malignant socio-political forces (a common Hooper theme) - and with it, the collapse of the family home (a particular fear of Spielberg’s) seems to lie at the heart of Poltergeist.

The American family in Poltergeist are not threatened from within as they are in another excellent horror film from 1982, Amityville II: The Possession, where the destructive forces (anger, hatred, sexual repression) are shown to be arising from the nature of family life itself. In Poltergeist, the family is portrayed as loving and caring, and shows no signs of dysfunction, but it is gradually broken apart by outside forces. This makes it no less a subversive horror film, because the malignant forces are suggested, allegorically, to be the dominant cultural ones of the Reagan years: corporate greed, a disregard for liberalism and a return to the horrors of cold war ideology and the nuclear threat.

In Poltergeist, the family live in a suburban tract housing development where the father, Steven, is a realtor. It is gradually revealed that the homes are built on a burial ground. Paranormal activity ensues, and the family’s youngest child, Carol Anne is abducted by the spirits and taken to another realm. The parents, played by Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams, are portrayed as liberals, baby-boomers, like Hooper and Spielberg. They are children of the ‘60s. In an early sequence we see Diane (Williams) smoking ‘pot’ in bed while Steven reads a biography of Ronald Reagan. This seems to set the allegorical mode of the film a la Hooper. Indeed the camera – which tracks in front of Steven to reveal the book that he is reading - is overly emphatic - another Hooper trait. Later in the film, when Diane presents to Steven the mysterious invisible forces in her kitchen, she asks Steven to ‘reach back to when you had an open mind’, a wryly humorous comment on the surface but underneath it emphasises the themes of the film: the inculcation of right-wing ideology and with it a return to cold war thinking.

Interestingly – and many critics have picked up on this – the television is portrayed in Poltergeist as the point of entry into the family home for the malignant forces. The apparatus by which the Reagan ideology is instilled into the American family. The film opens with the final fragmenting images before ‘sign-off’ (in the days before 24/7 TV), of the Lincoln Memorial and the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, accompanied by the Star Spangled Banner. These patriotic images are given a sinister edge by the static that follows them – the sense that something is lurking within the television set. Later in the film, ghosts of the dead march through the living room in procession witnessed by the family and recorded by the paranormal investigators. They seem to be marching in protest. Later we realise it is against the desecration of their burial ground, their memory. Lest they be forgotten. The next generation, as embodied by the family’s children, including Carol Anne, is in danger of forgetting (or never knowing) the truth of war (including Cold War) and are the most in danger of the malignant forces, of being inculcated by Reaganite patriotism and anti-Soviet propaganda. In Poltergeist then, television is treated with suspicion by the end of the film, when Steven removes the TV set from the motel that the family move into after finally fleeing the house. (Interestingly Spielberg was to return to this theme of patriotism vs. the truth as embodied by the flag raising at Iwo Jima when he produced Letters From Iwo Jima, directed by Clint Eastwood.)

In some ways, the title Poltergeist is somewhat of a misnomer. Poltergeist activity, it is said, generally centres on teenage occupants in the household (as it does, say, in The Exorcist). In Poltergeist, the teenage girl, Dana, is a nominal character. The abduction of Carol Anne occurs, it seems, as a way for Spielberg and Hooper to reaffirm the strength of the family in saving her from the malignant forces, namely ‘The Beast’. The Beast threatens to unleash the dead (i.e. the horrors of the past) onto the living, harnessing not only the media (the television set) but also corporate greed into the bargain. One of the most gratifying parts of Poltergeist is Steven’s final confrontation with his boss, Lewis Teague, (James Karen) whose greed has resulted in the desecration of the burial ground on which Steven’s house is built. While Steven turns his back on Teague, and all he represents, in favour of his family, the hapless corporate executive is left to witness the consequences of his actions as the whole development is destroyed by The Beast and his legions. It is a scene echoed almost exactly in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Glass Skull where Jones, standing literally on the dawn of the atomic age, is dwarfed by the awe-inspiring atomic mushroom cloud and all the horrors it implies.

Poltergeist’s conclusions are clear. To save one’s family, it was necessary to reject the Reaganite ideology, and back in 1982, that meant leaving the TV set outside the front door.

Shocks to the System is One Year Old!

Shocks to the System is coming up to its first anniversary and by happy coincidence the wonderful Maynard Morrisey has featured it in his Movie Diary as Horror Blog of the Month for April 2012. To have a gander visit Maynard Morrisey's Horror Movie Diary.

As I told Maynard, I started Shocks as a companion blog for the book I am writing on subversive horror films, but in the last year the blog has taken on a life of its own as I discovered the joys of blogging and making friends along the way.

So for this anniversary post, I wanted to express my appreciation to all my followers and readers, and give a special mention to some people who have inspired and supported Shocks to The System in the last twelve months: Wes at Plutonium Shores, James at Behind the Couch, Michael at WIWLN, George at Deformed Destructive,
Martin at A Hero Never Dies, and Maynard at Maynard Morrisey's Horror Movie Diary.

Thanks everyone for making this last year such a joy!

Whitby

I went to visit Whitby, North Yorkshire, this week and, inspired by James’s photos of Burrishoole Abbey at Behind the Couch, I took some photographs of some of Whitby’s iconic sights.

Whitby is, of course, famous as the setting of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, written in 1897. Stoker was taken by the mood of the place after staying there on vacation and it is easy to see why – the imposing abbey which overlooks the quaint seaside town, accessed by 199 steps along the side of the cliff, makes for a unique and atmospheric location. Romantic and brooding, but quite beautiful.

The town has retained much of its Victorian age character, so it is easy to see why it is the meeting place for Goth weekends twice a year, and the setting for the wonderful Bram Stoker Horror Film Festival each October. Strangely enough though, very few adaptations of Stoker’s novel have actually filmed here. In fact the only film adaptation to have used Whitby as an actual location, to my knowledge, is the BBC’s 1977 Louis Jourdan version, which featured a few location shots around St Mary’s Church (which also sits atop the cliff next to the remains of the abbey).

‘T’is a pity, as Stoker used this remarkable location so well; indeed some of Whitby’s features, such as the aforementioned steps and St Mary’s graveyard are an integral part of the novel and its narrative. They are cinematic indeed.

In the novel Dracula comes to Whitby from Transylvania aboard a ship, the Demeter, which crashes in to the rocks on Whitby’s headland.  Dracula escapes the wrecked ship and is sighted as a black dog running up the step to St Mary’s Church. Here, the novel’s heroines, Mina and Lucy, take their daily walks, enjoying the views from the churchyard. When Dracula spies Lucy, she becomes his willing victim…

Cine-Excess VI

The Cult Film Archive is the world's only research centre devoted to the study of cult film. The Archive is run under the directorship of Xavier Mendik, one of cult film's great academics, and each year hosts a conference in London. This year's looks to be especially interesting.

Titled Transglobal Excess: The Art and Atrocity of Cult Adaptation, the conference focuses on 'global adaptations of cult narratives, genres, themes and icons across a broad range of media and fiction formats. From pulp novels into pulp horror films and recent big budget blockbuster remakes of marginal midnight movies, to nationally defined interpretations of the pre-established extreme, the cult image remains a fascinating index of adaptation, whose wide array of remakes, renditions and realisations frequently reveals fascinating issues of nation and narrative, as well cultural, regional and historical distinction.'

Of particular interest to cult film fans are sure to be the two guests of honour, none other than Italian schlockmeisters Enzo G. Castellari (Keoma, The Inglorious Bastards, Bronx Warriors) and Sergio Martino (Torso, The Violent Professionals, Mountain of the Cannibal God) whose work 'both trades on themes and national traditions of cult adaption'.

Also taking part is Texas Chainsaw Massacre scriptwriter Kim Henkel who will be judging a competition for new screenwriters and reading their pitches for horror films.

The conference takes place 24 to 26 May 2012 at the Odeon Covent Garden & The Italian Cultural Institute, London

For more details go here