The Book of Lists: Horror
Page 3
5. Maybe I should take another moment from Halloween for this entry. Films like this are often called “slasher” films because they deal in knives and blood, lots of it. But as many bad horror films show, a lot of killing doesn’t necessarily make a memorable film. Spookiness, perhaps another word for terror, is required as well. And that is there in the final combat in Halloween. Laurie, the plucky babysitter—a figure that Carol Clover has dubbed “the last girl”—has succeeded in outwitting the monster Michael Myers and has seemingly killed him right through his mask with a cleverly bent coat hanger. She leans against a door jamb, worn out from the battle, while his body lies behind her. Then of course he gets up. Monsters are inexorable and implacable. That’s why there are sequels.
6. I’ll wind up with another last girl, Kristen, in Nightmare on Elm Street 4 (directed by Renny Harlin), a series with more pleasures of both horror and terror for me than the Halloweens and the Friday the 13ths. Initially a shy, self-effacing girl, as Freddy swallows up her friends, Kristen actually becomes more powerful herself, a kind of doppelganger for the mephitic janitor who is her rival. Entering her dreams to fight him, Kristen finds herself in front of a movie theatre. She begins watching the film until a sucking wind pulls her into it, like something out of Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. But this isn’t comedy; this is horror (or perhaps terror). As she runs to meet her boyfriend, the sequence begins over and over: they are caught in a time loop and she has to break out. Like the rest of us in the audience, she is in a dream and the dream is the movies, with continuous performances.
ANTHONY TIMPONE’S TEN MOVIES I WISH I
NEVER PUT ON THE COVER OF FANGORIA
Anthony Timpone is the longtime editor of Fangoria magazine (affectionately known as “Fango”) and its Website, www.fangoria.com, as well as the author of the book Men, Make-up and Monsters (St.Martin’sPress).
As editor of Fangoria, the toughest question I face every month is what to put on the cover. Each time, I must balance commercial decisions (potential hit movie tie-ins) with creative ones (what’s the best image?). I strive to find the most enticing cover ghoul to catch the prospective buyer’s eye and convince them to take our magazine home.
When horror is popular at the US box office (the current boom has been going strong since 1996’s Scream), the choice becomes easier, as there are plenty of films to pick from for each issue. When product is lean, you see a Buffy the Vampire Slayer cover and the gorehounds scream for blood—mine!
Looking back at nearly three decades’ worth of magazines, I noticed Fango gave national newsstand exposure to more than a few clunkers. Many times, since we don’t see the films before they come out, we have no idea if they will be good or not. So it’s a matter of luck and instinct. Despite the Herculean efforts of executive art director Bill Mohalley, who has designed every Fango cover since 1983, our “front and center” can only be as strong as the images that are supplied to us by the studios. Some bad movies have made great covers (#74, Critters 2), while great movies have made bad covers (#262, Death Proof). Reviewing over 200 editions that I edited since 1986 (you can’t blame me for the pre-Timpone #4’s Mr. Spock or #6’s C–3PO covers, thank you very much!), I’ve chosen this rogues’ gallery of the 10 Movies I Wish I Never Put on the Cover of Fangoria.
1. Maximum Overdrive, #56: Author Stephen King made his directorial debut in 1986 on this self-described “moron movie,” in which the machines of the world strike back at mankind. He also said he was “coked and drunk out of (his) mind” while he helmed this movie based on his short story “Trucks.” Wish I had a similar excuse for putting this ridiculous movie (which features a killer soda can vending machine) on the cover, but I don’t.
2. Bad Dreams, #72: The 1980s were littered with Freddy Krueger imitators, none quite as blatant as this 1988 Nightmare on Elm Street wannabe, in which a hideously burned cult leader returns from the dead to haunt survivors of a mass suicide. Real-life burn victim Richard Lynch starred as the scarred baddie, making Bad Dreams an exercise in Bad Taste.
3. Night Life, #82: This obscure 1989 direct-to-video zombie movie, about a young kid getting mixed up with zombies at his uncle’s mortuary, is a good little sleeper. What I hate about this cover, which was photographed specifically for the magazine, is that the prop corpse looks so darn fake. That femme ghoul sports the chintziest eyelashes since Tammy Faye.
4. Dolly Dearest, #102: Another cover born of desperation! Few major studio horror films were produced during the late eighties/early nineties, so I frequently had to come up with special theme issues (e.g. Lovecraft Movies, Vampires, Werewolves, Big Bugs), directto-video releases, or cable premieres for Fango cover subjects. In this case, I chose an awful Child’s Play knockoff to herald our Women of Horror issue.
5. Batman Returns, #114: Only once during my entire tenure as Fango editor was a cover ever imposed on me by my publisher, Norman Jacobs. The blockbuster Batman had set company sales records in 1989 for our sister magazine Starlog, so when the sequel rolled around in 1992, Norm insisted I put this non-horror release on Fango’s front to boost circulation. The hardcore readers rebelled, the movie underperformed at the box office, and we probably lost subscribers instead of gaining them.
6. The Craft, #153: This lightweight 1996 teen witch movie inspired one of the dullest Fango covers (utilizing the film’s poster campaign) of all time. We also found that cover shots of sexy girls and distaff monsters rarely translate into sales for us. Readers prefer ’em male-specific, plus, the bloodier the better.
7. Species II, #172: One of the worst sequels from the nineties (a decade cluttered with bad sequels), this 1998 sex-and-tentacles flick killed the franchise until the Sci-Fi Channel got into the Saturday night schlock market.
8. Virus, #175: This terrible 1999 Jamie Lee Curtis movie, about alien pack rats battling a tugboat crew, deserved to be lost at sea. Like the flop film, the cover’s a garish mess too.
9. Psycho, #179: Inarguably cinema history’s most notorious mistake, Gus Van Sant’s ill-advised shot-for-shot 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film led to this equally dreary and uninspired cover.
10. The Haunting, #184: The failure of Van Sant’s Psycho didn’t scare away producer Steven Spielberg from redoing the great 1963 Robert Wise ghost film a year later. The original film garnered praise for it subtlety and sense of dread; the CGI-inflated redux is lifeless and boring. What were they thinking? What was I thinking? A bad cover for a bad movie.
BARRY GIFFORD’S FIFTEEN FAVORITE LATE-NIGHT
TINGLERS (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)
Essays by Barry Gifford on these films may be found in his books Out of the Past: Adventures in Film Noir (2001) and The Cavalry Charges (2007). His novels include Wild at Heart (1990), which was filmed by David Lynch, Night People (1992), and Memories from a Sinking Ship (2007). He has written screenplays for numerous films, including Lost Highway (1997), Perdita Durango (1997), and City of Ghosts (2003).
1. Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1933; big nod to H. G. Wells)
2. I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943; big nod to Val Lewton)
3. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
4. Stranger on the Third Floor (Boris Ingster, 1940)
5. Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, 1922)
Cesare the Somnambulist (Conrad Veidt), in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
6. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
7. Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955; big nod to Davis Grubb)
8. Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)
9. Cult of the Cobra (Francis D. Lyon, 1955)
10. Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson, 1962)
11. Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997; big nod to myself)
12. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956; big nod to Jack Finney)
13. Invaders from Mars (William Cameron Menzies; 1953)
14. Serie Noire (Alain Corneau, 1981)
15. The Red House (Delmer Daves, 1947)
IN HORROR FILMS
Alan Beatts is the owner of Borderlands bookstore in San Francisco, which specializes in horror, fantasy, and science fiction. He’s been running the shop for ten years,but started off in a very different business—working as (among other things) a bodyguard, private investigator, and firearms instructor. The best thing about his current job is that people hardly ever shoot at him. He loves horror movies, and he wishes there were more like John Carpenter’s The Thing,in which the characters are all smart,do the right things, and mostly die anyway.
If you’ve ever found yourself thinking the characters in a horror movie are being stupid, you might be right. Below are five basic combat principles that are commonly violated in horror films. Although it’s understandable when inexperienced characters make mistakes, it’s surprising how often characters who should know better (like cops and soldiers) blow it.
1. Ensure that a firearm is loaded after it’s been out of your control.
You should never assume that a firearm is loaded or unloaded. Anytime a firearm has been out of your direct control (e.g., left in a room or with another person) you should check to see if it’s loaded (or not).
When Burt (Michael Gross) gives Melvin (Robert Jayne) an unloaded gun in Tremors (1990), it might have been better for Melvin to find out that it’s empty sometime before he tries to shoot one of the graboids. At least he survived, which is a good trick when you’re being chased by a twenty-foot-long burrowing worm with jaws like a shark.
2. Do not ignore your instincts.
One of the basic tenets of tactical awareness is that you should be guided by your instincts, unless there is a compelling reason not to do so. In short, if you have a “bad feeling” about something or some situation—stop, reassess, and if possible, choose another course of action.
An example of this is in The Howling (1981), when Karen White (Dee Wallace) goes out in the woods. At night. By flashlight. In a nightgown. To see what is howling outside. You needn’t have very well-developed instincts to know that’s a bad idea.
3. Maintain 360-degree awareness.
When operating in a risky environment, you must be aware of your surroundings. This especially includes areas beyond your normal line of sight (i.e., above and behind you). Before entering an area, you should look up and check the ceiling area for threats. When operating alone, check your back-trail at least every 30 seconds. If you’re working with a trusted partner, you should split the directions of responsibility such that one person is primarily responsible for observing the forward area and the other is focused on the rear area.
Despite their formidable attitude and obvious training, the unit of Colonial Marines in Aliens (1986) pays the price for not looking up in the first battle with the title critters under the atmosphere plant. There are plenty of other examples of this mistake in film but the sheer degree of the ugly consequences of this one are a standout—sergeant and more than half the unit killed plus a fusion reactor ready to explode. That’s a bad day by anyone’s measure. It’s not like they should have been surprised when the nasties started in on them. After all, they’d just watched something chew its way out of someone’s chest.
4. Secure your exit route.
You should be aware of possible exits at all times. In a dangerous environment you should not enter any area without identifying at least one method of exit and ensuring that the exit will remain useable (e.g., making sure that doors cannot be locked behind you).
Horror films are full of bad places to get stuck—crypts, houses, ships, towns, toilets . . . you name it. Sometimes you can’t avoid getting trapped, but this rule would’ve saved the day in Jeepers Creepers (2001). The sibling protagonists are smart enough to realize what a bad situation they are about to get into when they first look at the sinister chute leading underground. Smart enough, in fact, that Trish (Gina Philips) comments to Darry (Justin Long), “You know the part in horror movies when somebody does something really stupid, and everybody hates him for it? This is it.” But they still aren’t smart enough to think about how the hell Darry is going to get out of that hole in the ground if something goes wrong.
5. Confirm your kills.
A threat should never be considered neutralized without verification. An unverified kill should be treated as a threat until verified. This can take many forms, ranging from handcuffing unresponsive subjects that have been shot to keeping weapons on target and maintaining a safe distance after the threat has stopped moving . . . all the way to “safety” shots into the head of previously engaged and motionless targets.
Halloween (1978) is the classic example of this. Michael Myers (Nick Castle) is stabbed in the neck with a knitting needle, stabbed in the stomach with a butcher knife, and shot multiple times. Each time he gets up and goes at it again until he falls out a second story window (and he still vanishes at the end of the film). Based on subsequent events, perhaps even a bullet between the eyes wouldn’t have put him down for good, but it might have helped. More important, a set of handcuffs (or even better, parking a car on top of him) might have made life much better for poor Laurie Strode.
EDGAR WRIGHT’S TOP TEN “ OUCH! I’M SORRY, BUT
THAT HAS GOT TO HURT!” MOMENTS IN HORROR FILMS
(PLUS ONE VERY HONORABLE MENTION)
Edgar Wright is a key figure in contemporary British film. He directed Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead,both of which he cowrote with Simon Pegg.He also directed the UK Channel 4’s Spaced,a sitcom that quickly gained cult status and changed the landscape of English television in the late 1990s.
Chances are neither you, nor your family, friends, nor even friends of friends have been groped by a poltergeist, raped by a tree or had their head exploded in a million pieces by a naughty telepath.
But I’d wager you all know the sheer agony of a paper cut from an envelope. Ouch. That’s nasty. You wouldn’t wish it upon your worst enemy. (Ironically, that’s exactly what Frank Whaley’s vengeful assistant does to the studio boss from hell, Kevin Spacey, in Swimming With Sharks. More on that later.)
There’s a distinct level of audible sympathy when somewhat everyday injuries crop up in films. You can hear an audible “ewww,” gasp, or intake of breath when such tribulations are depicted.
What is even more interesting is how such moments can provoke the biggest audience reactions in the goriest, most outlandishly violent, fantastical genre films.
This is true peeking-through-your-fingers material. . . .
1. The Thing (1982): John Carpenter’s classic remake has some of the most vividly gruesome creature effects of all time. It’s wildly gory and deeply unsettling. But what moment unites the audience in a collective shudder? Why, the scene when Kurt Russell forces his entire team to undergo a blood test and takes a scalpel to each of their thumbs. It may be only a drop of red stuff compared to the remainder of the film, but it never fails to make even the most hardened moviegoers wriggle in their seats.
2. The Evil Dead (1982): As mentioned before, it’s unlikely we can truly empathize with someone enduring a nasty case of molestation-by-trees. Equally, you won’t quite be able to have the sense memory of what it feels like to be hacked to pieces whilst possessed by Candarian demons. But can you imagine how painful it would be to have a sharpened no. 2 pencil jammed into your ankle? Of course you can. We’ve all been there. Admittedly your demonic soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend didn’t wield the pencil. But still, a loud and very hearty ouch.
3. Dawn of the Dead (1978): Foreheads have been sliced off, necks have had lumps taken out of them, and zombies have been chowing down on humans all over the shop (literally in this one too). One of our protagonists, Roger, has already had a meaty chunk taken out of his ankle by a hungry flesh eater. That’s quite an ouch already. But later, salt is poured into that very gash, when another equally ravenous zombie grabs poor Roger’s now-bandaged leg and needlessly fingers the open wound. That’s just not cricket. It’s pure
ouch.
4. The Exorcist (1973): The second half of William Friedkin’s legendary shocker contains some of the strongest, most disturbing material to ever feature in a studio picture. There’s masturbation with a crucifix, for one. Let alone a little girl saying the c-word in an English accent whilst possessed by El Diablo. Some pretty hot stuff. But the CAT scan scene where little Linda Blair is subjected to some nasty-looking injections has all needle-phobes hiding under their seats. Couple that with the thunderous noise of the procedure, plus some truly terrifyingly industrial-looking medical apparatus, and I’ll wager 1970s audiences were looking at alternative medicines for a good while afterwards.
5. Audition (1999): A fair few people have never had acupuncture. They are understandably not comfortable with the idea of needles, no matter how fine, being inserted into the flesh. The climax of Takeshi Miike’s Audition is not going be a good way of convincing them otherwise. The notorious denouement of this film features an extended scene of the deranged Eihi Shiina torturing a drugged and paralyzed Ryo Ishibashi by poking needles into his chest and face. When I saw the film, this provoked several walkouts, even before she cut off his foot with a piano wire. The dismemberment was extreme, but the needles? That was quintessential ouch.