In addition to the usual reviews and comments you would find on a horror movie blog, this is also a document of the wonderfully vast horror movie section of the video store I worked at in my youth.
On the heels of my thoughts on the book Kid Power! I decided to post a collection of trailers for some of my favourite kid-centric horror films. Enjoy!
I've
spent the last while digging through Kid Power!, the book I picked up
at Fantasia last month.
Released by Canadian publisher Spectacular Optical, Kid Power! is a collection
of essays on kid-centric cult classics lovingly assembled by
cinephiles Paul Corupe & Kier-La Jannise.
I
enjoyed this book immensely, but was also impressed by how wildly
varied and diverse it was, as it features writers from around the
world covering everything from the traditional to the darkest pits of
the art house. While I was around when a lot of the stuff covered in
this book was released (either on the big or small screen), I was
surprised by how much of it was new to me. I found myself making a
list while reading and definitely want to track down titles like Ken
Loach's Kes and Ann Turner's Celia in the future.
The most
comprehensive part of the book – and frankly, most impressive –
was Kier-La Janisse deep exploration into the ABC Afterschool Special
phenomenon of the seventies and eighties. I was absolutely shocked by
how many now-famous actors got their start here – Jodie Foster,
Jennifer Grey, Michelle Pfieffer, Val Kilmer, Jennifer Jason Leigh,
Rob Lowe & Amanda Plummer just to name a few.
The
chapter that most appealed to me as a horror fan was the
detailed rundown of actress Nicolette Elmi. A
Euro-horror mainstay, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas & Craig Martin
trace Elmi's career from her early uncredited roles like the one in
Mario Bava's 1971 slasher Bay of Blood all the way up to her swan song as the
usherette in Lamberto Bava's Demons in 1985.
The
interview with Rock Demers about The Tales For All Collection was
also a gleeful trip down memory lane, as stuff like The Dog Who Stopped The War and The Peanut Butter Solution got constant play at
my house as a kid.
Nicolette Elmi in Dario Argento's Deep Red.
There
were two points that were really hammered home to me while reading
Kid Power! The first was how profoundly affecting a piece of media
can be if it hits you at the right place and right time. It can be
inspiring, comforting and/or completely change your outlook. I think
this was best represented by Chris Alexander's recollection of Barry
Morse's adaptation of Isaac Asimov's The Ugly Little Boy, where
seeing it at the age of eight brought home the concept of death and
loss, and Robin Bougie's experience watching Curtis Hanson's The Children of Times Square paralleled his own midnight excursions into
the underbelly of New York City.
The
other thing was just how much children's programming – and
development in general – has changed over the last few decades. It is almost certain that the material meant for kids in this book would never be
produced today. It appears there is a general attitude nowadays that
children need to be, for lack of a better term, “handled with kid
gloves”. As Janisse states during her interview with John &
Paul Hough;
“When
I was a kid, we went to school by ourselves, we just went out after
school and had to be home by a certain time. Now I have a brother who
has kids, and they're supervised all the time. Everything was so
different then.”
The work
of John Hough is perhaps the greatest example of this, as he worked
on several films for Disney (like 1980's Watcher In The Woods) during
their “dark” phase, releasing films that sought to scare the
bejesus out of their best customers. Now, children's programming
seems so incredibly sanitized, as if its only function is to
preserve the innocence of youth for as long as possible.
Lynn-Holly Johnson, Bette Davis and Kyle Richards in Watcher In The Woods.
Unfortunately,
keeping the darkness at bay may do more harm than good in the long
run. What would childhood be without discovery? If you ask me, to be deprived some of the
wonderfully colourful treasures found within the pages of Kid Power!
seems like child cruelty.
Hello all. With the Festival of Fear and TIFF imminent, it's the calm before the storm around here, but below are some horror tidbits to keep you satiated until then.
Slashermania!
A preview for an upcoming release from Freaktown Comics came across my email last week called Slashermania. Written by Russell Hillman with art by Ron Joseph, Harry Saxon & Jake Isenberg, here's the description;
“1983. Troubled teens from New York and Los Angeles are taken to a summer camp facility to be trained as counsellors and mix safely with other people their own age. Little do they know they are being watched by an audience hungry for sex and violence. They are the designated victims for a bizarre contest of murder and mayhem – WELCOME TO SLASHERMANIA!”
Click to enlarge.
This seems to combine ideas from three projects dear to my heart - Friday the 13th and the lesser known, Marc Evans' My Little Eye and Maurice Devereaux's $la$her$, so Slashermania definitely has my attention. No release date has been set, but you can keep up to date by following Freaktown Comics, here.
Alien Digested.
Here's a cool little link I found in my Facebook feed this week, courtesy Dion Conflict (organizer of the yearly Shock & Awe marathons). Before the advent of home video, it was possible to buy heavily abbreviated versions of theatrical films on Super 8 called “digests”. Here is one for the 1979 sci-fi classic Alien.
I'm always impressed by these things. It takes a lot of skill to cut a two-hour film down to under twenty minutes and still have it make sense narratively.
You Darn Kids!
I came across these awesome series of drawings from the artist IBTrav this week. You know how Scooby Doo & The Gang always came across all sorts of supposed ghosts and ghouls? Well, this guy had the brilliant idea to insert in more “familiar” frights.
You check out the rest of this series - plus IBTrav's many other projects - by going here.
So, I know I've been slacking off in the video games department, especially since the last few episodes of The Walking Dead still remain unplayed, but I found something so frickin' cool on Monday. A super awesome dude by the name of Jak Locke has created a retro Atari 2600 game based on the classic TV show Twin Peaks.
I realize it's been out for a while, but hey, it's new to me and hopefully some of you, as well. Entitled The Black Lodge, it recreates the last few moments of the unforgettable last episode where Agent Dale Cooper enters said place between worlds. There is a free download available for PC and Mac, and even comes with a beautiful retro style manual.
There's so much to love about this game. First, it seems like Locke has pulled actual sounds from vintage 2600 titles like Pitfall and Yar's Revenge, though that could just be my imagination. If you stand still at the beginning, you can also listen to a chip-tune rendition of Angelo Badalamenti's Under The Sycamore Trees.
The game is also rife with Easter eggs. If you survive long enough to get 5000 points, the Giant will appear with information (in his usual riddled prose) on how to beat the game. Along the way, you'll see iconic characters like The Man from Another Place, Laura & Leland Palmer and, of course, Killer BOB.
My current high score is 5650, so take a crack and see if can beat it. If you'd rather just sit back and watch someone else play, here's a YouTube walkthrough, although sadly without sound.
Last Wednesday, I took in the latest lecture of The Black Museum at The Royal. This one was kind of special in that the presenter was writer, film programmer and cinephile Kier-La Janisse who, many years before, founded the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies; the model for which The Black Museum was based. This month's lecture was an exploration into the history of the classroom safety film.
With Janisse at the helm, this lecture felt different for two reasons. First, she had conducted this lecture many times before, so was completely off book and thus free to move about the stage. Not tethered to her desk, like many of the previous presenters, it made things much more stimulating visually. Second, School of Shock featured large chunks of video in between academia. Now, Janisse did point out that her full lecture on this subject is six hours long and what we were seeing was an abbreviated version, so I would imagine that one has a different balance between the visual and auditory.
Janisse began the lecture talking about the beginnings of educational films in Chicago circa 1912. Around 1923, there was a shift from 22mm to the more popular 16mm, as its portability enabled government programs and church groups to purchase films & equipment to tour around rural communities.
The film market wasn't initially brought into the classroom - it was generally regarded as a lazy way to teach - until the start of World War II. The army employed this method to not only bolster morale for the war effort, but also as quick and efficient visual technical manuals for training new recruits. After Pearl Harbour, Hollywood started helping out, lending many of their talents to the production of these films.
Kier-la Janisse talks classroom scare films.
Janisse focused her talk mainly on the time period from 1958-1985, which is known as The Golden Age of The Classroom Film. In 1957, the Russian launch of Sputnik (and subsequently Sputnik II) caused an uproar within America's scientific community. How is it that the Ruskies were able to get so far ahead of their Western counterparts? It was decided that to get ahead of their Cold War adversaries, the system needed an overhaul. Thus began a new era heralded by The National Defense of Education Act in 1958, followed by the Elementary & Secondary Educational Act in 1965.
There were many filmmakers who thrived in this climate. Quoting film archivist Geoff Alexander, Janisse summed up this era beautifully and led us into the next section of the lecture on child safety;
“...It was cinematic socialism thriving in a capitalist context, the money flow moving from the Federal government to the school districts, then to the film companies, and eventually into the pockets of the filmmakers. It was a great time to be a filmmaker, with ready-made audiences and an almost endless stream of funding.”
One such filmmaker was Sid Davis, whose name is most associated with sensationalist educational films. He made over a hundred films in his career, with colourful titles such as The Dangerous Stranger (1950), Rape and the Rapist (1978) and the flagrantly homophobic Boys Beware (1961).
To illustrate this section, Janisse screened Davis' 1951 film Live & Learn (which features his daughter Jill) and a few safety spots from the UK, including this amazing one narrated by Donald Pleasance.
Janisse then spoke of a man named John Krish. In 1977, this ex-British transport worker was commissioned to make a film about transit safety, specifically anti-vandalism. His employers told him not to include any actual vandalism, as to not incite the very activity they were trying to prevent, so Krish chose to employ a fantasy world context to get his point across. The resulting film The Finishing Line is so brilliantly shocking, it could've only been conceived in the seventies.
What is even crazier about this film is that Krish, seemingly not concerned with absolute safety on set, chose to shoot the film on a working railway line. Using local schoolchildren, they just filmed when the trains weren't going by! Not to mention all those jagged chain-link fences and steel tracks these kids seem to running toward full-tilt.
The next section of the lecture focused on the perils of drugs. Janisse, not surprisingly, began this section with the propaganda film Reefer Madness. Originally financed by a church group in 1936 under the name Tell Your Children, it was bought by producer Dwain Esper a few years later, recut and redistributed as its more commonly known title as an exploitation film. Its intended purpose is a shining example of how drug films generally skirt actual fact for fiction in order to deter youngsters who may not as yet begun to experiment in such things.
Moving on from marijuana to LSD, Janisse spoke of the government's experimentation and how its psychedelic nature made for some confusing PSA's that often seemed to blur the line between anti and pro.
If there was any doubt, Janisse then showed a clip of an interview with actor Richard Lynch were he describes how, while under the influence of LSD, set himself on fire in Central Park. She also showed a film called All My Tomorrows about the dangers of mixing alcohol with barbiturates.
The most disturbing film of this section was Dead Is Dead. In 1974, comedian Godfrey Cambridge felt that drug PSA's were being geared mostly toward middle-class white populations, so he took it upon himself to make his own about the heroin addiction running rampant in the more poverty-stricken communities.
Janisse said what made this film stand out was that it not only had Cambridge speaking directly to the audience, as opposed to the detached narration of similar films, but he also mentioned addiction as all encompassing and something that inflicted our entire society and not just the sections that are most often ignored. The above was just the trailer and does not include all the grim photos of dead junkies and the physical traumas of prolonged drug use. This movie was predominantly shown to elementary school students, so I can only imagine the reactions this must have garnered.
The next section, the most alarming by far, was the one on Driver's Education.
Janisse began this section at the end of the fourties, when the mass production of the rocket V8 engine had contributed to a twenty per cent increase in road fatalities in the United States. With the rise of street racing culture, it is not surprising a good number of those were teenage boys. Safety filmmakers were quick to combat this, and soon the term “Teenicide” was coined.
The word was first used in the 1949 film Last Date featuring pre-Bewitched actor Dick York, which then became the template for all the driver safety films of the time period.
As time went on, there was a shift to the more graphic and realistic. Slideshows with names like Suicide Club and Highways of Agony featuring pictures of real traffic accidents made the rounds, eventually evolving into film reels.
In 1959, a group of photographers, in co-operation with the Ohio State Highway Patrol, made the film Signal 30.
When I was a teenager about to take Driver's Ed, I heard stories that to get your license, you had to sit through hours of actual traffic accident carnage. I never ended up seeing any of that - maybe laws are different in Canada - so I always figured it was an urban legend. Nope, Signal 30 is that footage and it is exactly as advertised.
And if that wasn't enough to drive the point home, Janisse also introduced us to Australia's Transport Accident Commission. In the late eighties, drunk driving was becoming a real problem Down Under, so the TAC decided to roll up their sleeves and do something about it. The result was a slew of unrelentingly brutal ads that started airing at dinnertime. There was an immediate decline in impaired fatalities.
Below, is a campaign montage that was put together for the 20th anniversary. WARNING: These don't fuck around. I don't mind telling you that seeing this unrelenting video on the big screen left me a little shell-shocked. But hey, if it keeps one person from getting behind the wheel while drunk, it's worth it.
After we'd all had a moment to catch our breath, Janisse made an excellent point as to why the TAC spots were so effective over all that had come before them. Films like Last Date had characters that we could relate to, but weren't really graphic enough to really get the point across, and stuff like Signal 30 was so unflinchingly graphic that it eventually caused a disconnect with the viewer. The TAC videos use both in equal measure and thus accomplish what each by themselves could not.
The last section of the lecture was about workplace safety. Janisse told us about a company called Centron which produced hundreds of these films. One of the filmmakers on their payroll was none other than Herk Harvey of Carnival of Souls fame. It wasn't unusual for genre filmmakers to hone their skills making industrial films (George A. Romero and William Crain are two other examples) and the grim nature of the subject matter would certainly seem to fit with their sensibilities.
A well known construction site safety video by Herk Harvey, featuring a catchy theme song by Jim Stringer, is Shake Hands With Danger (1970)
In front of this film, Janisse also stuck an infamous Canadian PSA by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. I instantly remembered this one, as this series of ads tore up social media when they burst onto television screens in the late 2000's.
Janisse has done this lecture all over the world and usually tailors the videos to whatever country in which she is presenting, but I'm glad she snuck in a little CanCon, because that one is a doozy. She also mentioned that she refrained from using anything from the NFB, as they tend to be all class, and rarely go the sensationalist route.
So, why did the Golden Age of the Classroom Film come to an end? Well, Janisse offered up two reasons. First, that era began because of The Cold War, so when that wound down, so did the boom for classroom film production. The mid-eighties also brought in the advent of video tape, making it less profitable for the distributors who cranked out content.
Hey everyone. It's been a long week, but here's a rundown of some of the cooler stuff that went down in the last few days.
Console Carnage.
It was super great week for horror gaming. Coming out of Gamescom, we got trailers for not just one, but two upcoming titles. The first is the teen-slasher game Until Dawn.
The trailer doesn't give too much information on gameplay, but damn if it doesn't look like fun, and if it is really as infinitely CYOA as their site suggests, this is a game for which I have been waiting years and years.
The second was for P.T, which we now know is the new Silent Hill game. Although, for the first few days the only ones privy to that information were the ones who braved the playable teaser on the PSN. Making it through to the other side, you saw this;
Kojima and del Toro seems like a wonderful pairing, and I can't wait to play this (perhaps even with the Project Morpheus?) Since I don't yet have a PS4 though, I have to live vicariously through the walkthroughs on YouTube, like this one, though my favourite reaction video has to be from Gamespot's Mary Kish.
Nice Spread.
Last week, I posted the trailer for Astron 6's new film The Editor. Well, late this week, they revealed the new poster, which is a thing of beauty.
Created by renowned UK artist Graham Humphreys, I think it perfectly captures the sensationalist tone they are going for with this project. The Editor premieres at TIFF's Midnight Madness next month.
More Trailers.
Speaking of posters, another documentary I contributed to was Kevin Burke's poster art exploration Twenty-Four by Thirty-Six. This week, a new trailer hit the Web;
Lastly, my good buddy Jeff Sinasac, who has appeared in two of my short films, is now hard at work on a feature he wrote & produced called Red Spring. This week, they released a concept trailer.
As you can see, it looks super ambitious and I can't wait to see the finished product.
On the heels of the Fantasia screening of The Harvest, and John McNaughton's triumphant return to the director's chair, I'd like to call attention to one of his other works that doesn't get enough love.
That opening makes me chuckle. I can buy Hellraiser as ushering in a new wave of horror, but Warlock? It's a fun movie, but not making anyone's best of list, so it's amusing that those were the two movies the marketers felt were significant between 1987-1989. I am, however, glad they mentioned Re-Animator, as The Borrower definitely has the same vibe as the gold given to us by Stuart Gordon and Frank Henenlotter in the mid-to-late eighties. The era of this movie was the tail end of a sweet spot for genre film, when Cannon was still a force, special effects artists like Kevin Yagher were rock stars, and likable people like Rae Dawn Chong were headliners.
It's been a depressing week, but let's start off with some good news, shall we?
From Poster to Reality.
The tenth title in this year's Midnight Madness lineup, Astron 6's giallo homage The Editor, was announced this week. It's pretty awesome that something that was originally conceived as a poster for the show If They Came From Within had enough gusto to become an actual production with the help of a Indiegogo campaign. Here is the newly released teaser trailer.
I don't need to tell you how authentic this looks, right down to the camera moves. Even though this movie boasts the likes of Udo Kier and Tristan Risk, I am not ashamed to admit I am just as excited to see it play The Ryerson because I was a contributor to the cause.
For more information on the Midnight programme, click here.
R.I.P. Marilyn Burns 1949-2014.
Actress Marilyn Burns passed away this week in Houston, Texas. She was 65.
This one stings, as we were still celebrating the fourtieth anniversary of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; her crowning achievement. It wasn't the only film that she appeared in, having roles in other titles like Eaten Alive, Kiss Daddy Goodbye and Helter Skelter, but Texas Chainsaw was the one that had us covering our eyes and ears in theatres and living rooms. If there was ever a list of actresses that endured hell for a role, Burns would be at the top of it. From the stories of the gut-wrenching prolonged takes to Gunnar Hansen actually cutting Burns with a knife, every bit of her anguish transferred onto the screen. It is one of the many reasons why the film, even decades later, still retains its power. Rest in peace, Marilyn.
R.I.P. Menahem Golan 1929-2014.
And as if losing Marilyn wasn't enough, we also saw movie mogul Menahem Golan pass away this week, as well. He was 85.
One half of the producing team Golan & Globus, their contribution to my childhood is immeasurable. As a kid, my love of horror movies was only matched by my love of ninja flicks and these two guys had a hand in pretty much every one that made it to my neighbourhood video store. When the Cannon Video logo came up onscreen of a rented VHS, it meant I was about to be whisked away on an adventure, that had lots of action, blood, bullets, and maybe, if I was lucky, some boobs.
The mark of quality!
As was announced in July, the Cannon documentary Electric Boogaloo is playing TIFF this year, so I'm sure there will be some sort of commemoration for his passing. I can think of no better tribute than this film, save perhaps a flaming car full of ninjas flipping twenty times and then exploding. Though, I think the people at The Ryerson may frown upon that.
I got my Kickstarter perks from my contribution to the documentary Why Horror? this week.
They are pretty sweet, I must say. I also get a Blu-ray of the film, but since it's not actually finished yet, I have to wait for that. I'm kind of hoping that it appears on the big screen somewhere before that anyway. Being that the director Tal Zimerman is from Toronto, I think there is a good possibility there will be a premiere of some kind by year's end. If you happen to be attending the Festival of Fear in a few weeks, there is a Why Horror? panel/preview in the works, so keep your eye out for that.
For those who don't know, Why Horror? is a documentary about the horror phenomenon, and why some people are irresistibly drawn to it as a form of entertainment and features all manner of experts, including filmmakers, artists and writers. For more info on the project, click here.
Last week, Scream Factory announced yet another stellar Blu-ray release accompanied by a wonderful new cover art design.
Dolls is a film I saw just last year, and had a blast. It's one of Stuart Gordon's lesser known works, but still embodies everything we love about this filmmaking maverick. Here's the trailer.
Oh, long weekends are the best. Especially when they are supposed to be rained out, but then said rain never materializes. So, I'm taking time from “the outside” to post on this week's events.
Cellular Cannibals.
A strange little tie-in came to my attention this week. There's a video game out coinciding with the release of Eli Roth's The Green Inferno next month. Entitled The Green Inferno Survival (available on iTunes and Google Play), you play as the survivors of a plane crash downed in the Amazon jungle and try to keep them from becoming the indigenous population's next meal.
The graphics look pretty cool, and best of all, it's free! The Green Inferno releases in theatres September 5th. To check out my review from last year's TIFF premiere, click here.
Colour By Nightmares.
I saw a devilish little thing on The Chive this week. Some unstable individuals took innocuous colouring book drawings and modified them slightly to make them more... troubling. Here are some my faves below.
This is yet another news post I sadly have to end with bad news. Legendary make-up artist Dick Smith passed away on Thursday. He was 92.
Two things about Dick Smith stick out in my memory. I started watching horror films at the start at the eighties, so unsurprisingly the first make-up artist I became aware of was Tom Savini. I remember seeing an interview with him - most likely on Fangoria's Scream Greats Vol. 1 - where he praised Dick Smith as being the best in the business. Hearing this, I was like, well, if Savini is saying that, Smith must really be “the shit.” The other defining moment was obviously his work on The Exorcist, although not just for the obvious reasons.
Everything he did bringing Regan's possession to life is still among the best on film, but I was also very impressed by the age make-up on Max Von Sydow. And by impressed, I mean, I didn't even realize it was age make-up. I spent the first twenty-odd years of my life thinking Sydow was way older than he actually was. Dick Smith was a true talent, and inspired pretty much all of the greats that came out of the seventies and eighties. Farewell to a true craftsman.
Recently, I was the beneficiary of some awesome treasures of film festivals past. TIFF programmer Colin Geddes was moving offices and needing to unload some of his old programme guides, I was happy to take them off his hands. Here below, for your viewing enjoyment are some of the more eye-catching spoils.
First up, are the programmes from the Sitges Film Festival. The most prestigious genre film festival in Europe, I've always dreamed of attending. Gods willing, one of my projects may play there someday.
I love that last one. The art reminds me of the stuff in those old D&D manuals and Fighting Fantasy books. This next one is from the Fantastisk Film Festival in Sweden.
I also want to mention this year's programme guide for Fantasia, as it memorializes genre greats Ray Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury and Forrest J. Ackermann.
My bookshelf just got a little fuller - and a lot heavier. Love it!